r 


LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 

PRESENTED  BY 

ROBERT  L.  CASHMAN 


~™ 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK 
AND   THE   CHRISTIAN   LIFE 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK 

AND 

THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 

OR   THE 

Conception  of  the  Christian  Life  implied 
in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 

BY 

CHARLES  C.  TIFFANY,  D.D. 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  WHITTAKER 

2    AND   3    BIBLE   HOUSE 


T 


Copyright,  1898, 
BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 


A.  G.  SHERWOOD  &  CO. 

47  LAFAYETTE  PLACE 

NEW  YORK 


PREFACE 


'THHE  contents  of  this  little  volume  consti- 
•*-  tuted  the  substance  of  the  Bohlen  Lec- 
tures delivered  in  Philadelphia  in  February, 
1898.  The  matter  has  been  somewhat  differ- 
ently arranged,  the  lectures  having  been  sub- 
divided and  slightly  enlarged  in  order  to  render 
the  treatment  of  the  theme  more  succinct  and 
complete.  The  object  of  the  treatise  is  to  indi- 
cate the  conception  of  the  Christian  Life  which 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  presupposes,  eluci- 
dates, and  strives  to  nurture.  From  the  method 
of  its  nurture  the  character  of  the  life  is  de- 
duced. It  was  of  course  impossible,  in  treating 
of  the  services  of  the  Prayer  Book,  not  to  make 
an  interpretation  of  them,  and  in  that  interpre- 
tation all  may  not  agree.  The  intention  of  the 
interpretation,  however,  is  not  polemical.  It  is 
simply  to  elucidate  the  characteristic  features  of 


30% 


VI  PREFACE 

life  as  religious  by  an  exposition  of  the  disci- 
pline to  which  the  Prayer  Book  subjects  it.  It 
is  hoped  that  the  largeness,  healthfulness,  and 
genuineness  of  the  Christian  Life  may,  in  some 
measure,  be  made  clear  by  the  practical  com- 
ment of  the  Prayer  Book  upon  it,  and  that  the 
Prayer  Book  itself  may  be  better  appreciated  and 
more  diligently  used  as  the  fulness  of  its  scope 
and  the  sanity  of  its  method  become  apparent 
through  the  perception  of  its  bearing  upon 

life. 

C.  C.  T. 

October,  1898. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGB 

I.     UNITY  IN  VARIETY  OF  RELIGIOUS  LIFE  .        3 
II.    PRAYER  THE  ROOT   OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 

LIFE 12 

III.  COMMON  PRAYER  INDICATIVE  OF  SOCIAL 

CHRISTIAN  LIFE 25 

IV.  THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AS  INTELLIGENT    .      39 
V.    THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AS  RATIONAL  .    .      47 

VI.  THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AS  SALVATION  .  .  61 
VII.  THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AS  INFLUENCED  BY 

THE  HOLY  SCRIPTURES 72 

VIII.  THE  BEARING  OF  THE  COLLECTS  ON 

THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 89 

IX.  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 

YEAR  ON  THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  ...  97 
X.  THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AS  TAUGHT  BY  THE 

SACRAMENT  OF  BAPTISM 113 

XL  THE  LESSON  OF  CONFIRMATION  FOR  THE 

CHRISTIAN  LIFE 125 


viii  CONTENTS 


CHAPTBR  PAGE 

XII.    THE  LORD'S  SUPPER  IN  ITS  BEARING  ON 

THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 139 

XIII.  CLERGY  AND  LAITY — THE  MINISTRY  OF 

INSTRUCTION 153 

XIV.  THE  MINISTRY  OF  CONSOLATION   .    .    .     163 


THE   PRAYER   BOOK 
AND   THE   CHRISTIAN    LIFE 


THE    PRAYER    BOOK 

AND 

THE    CHRISTIAN    LIFE 
CHAPTER  I 

UNITY  IN    VARIETY    OF    RELIGIOUS    LIFE 

^  I  "HE  Book  of  Common  Prayer  has  usually 
•*•  been  treated  with  reference  to  its  bear- 
ing on  ecclesiastical,  theological,  and  liturgical 
matters.  It  has  been  regarded  chiefly  as  a  the- 
saurus of  devotional  expression,  of  doctrinal  def- 
inition, or  of  ecclesiastical  tradition.  As  such 
it  has  been  used  as  an  armory  from  which 
church  combatants  have  drawn  the  potent  weap- 
ons for  their  conflicts  in  the  various  departments 
of  polemical  encounter.  Its  sources  have 
been  diligently  traced,  and  its  expressions  have 
been  minutely  searched,  to  supply  material  for 
such  controversial  discussion,  or  for  the  disci- 
plinary action  attending  it.  Like  the  Lord's 
Supper,  which  was  instituted  to  be  a  bond  of 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


union  and  has  been  made  a  chief  storm-centre 
of  contention  and  excommunication,  the  Prayer 
Book,  fashioned  to  be  a  manual  of  worship 
inclusive,  in  its  charity,  of  wide  differences  of 
apprehension,  has  often  been  turned  into  a  bar- 
rier to  part  Prelate  from  Puritan,  to  divide  High 
Churchmen  from  Low  Churchmen,  to  dissever 
Christian  people  into  parties  rancorous  and 
belligerent. 

As,  however,  the  Eucharist,  apart  from  theo- 
ries concerning  it,  forms  in  its  positive  content 
a  point  of  contact  and  unity  for  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  Christians,  so  the  Book  of  Com- 
mon Prayer,  in  its  positive  content,  apart  from 
theories  supposed  to  lurk  beneath  its  expres- 
sions, furnishes  a  ground  of  common  sympathy 
and  a  bond  of  practical  union  among  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  Churchmen.  The  intention  of 
this  volume  is  wholly  irenical.  But  one  would 
be  very  inexperienced  or  very  blind  to  suppose 
that  this  irenical  purpose  could  be  compassed 
by  any  attempt  to  reduce  all  religious  life,  or 
the  true  expression  of  it,  to  the  dead  level  of 
one  exact  pattern,  or  by  any  effort  to  explain 
away  those  real  differences  of  conviction  which 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


have  always  characterized  the  Christian  Church. 
These  distinctive  apprehensions  of  piety  are 
founded  in  diversity  of  moral  temperament  and 
mental  constitution.  From  their  persistence 
they  promise  to  be  permanent  and  must  be 
reckoned  with.  The  aesthetic  or  practical  trend 
of  the  nature,  the  mystical  or  rational  tem- 
perament of  the  individual,  the  subjective  or 
objective  bent  of  the  mind,  —  these  have  always 
existed,  and  will  presumably  always  manifest 
themselves  as  existent  in  that  department  of 
life  we  call  religious,  as  well  as  in  that  which 
we  call  secular.  For  these  two  departments 
of  life,  the  religious  and  the  secular,  are  to  a 
Christian  consciousness  only  subordinately  two, 
being  in  reality  but  different  sides  of  the  one 
life  in  God.  Men  and  women  equally  devout 
but  unequally  or  diversely  endowed  have  illus- 
trated this  natural  and  healthful  divergence  of 
type,  while  religion  has  persisted  in  them  all. 
Any  guide  or  directory  of  worship  therefore 
which  aimed  at  their  suppression  or  extinction 
would  prove  abortive,  and  find  itself  discredited 
in  its  attempt  to  discredit  a  diviner  order  than  its 
narrowness  could  descry.  The  attempt  there- 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


fore  will  be  to  show  that  the  Prayer  Book  offers 
a  point  of  higher  unity  for  the  religious  con- 
sciousness in  its  exposition  of  and  contribution 
to  the  potent  reality  of  the  Christian  life  in  all 
its  varied  forms. 

There  is  nothing  more  apparent  or  impres- 
sive than  the  appearance  and  permanence  of 
distinct  types  of  Christian  life ;  and  it  is  well  to 
recall  the  fact  that  they  emphasize  unity  rather 
than  disparity.  The  essential  reality  of  reli- 
gion is  found  to  be  in  all  of  them  and  is  in  its 
signal  vitality  the  germinal  impulse  of  all  typi- 
cal divergence.  Religious  vitality  is  in  fact 
too  pervasive  and  intense  in  human  nature  not 
to  manifest  itself  through  any  and  every  me- 
dium which  may  be  present  to  it.  It  forces 
itself  into  prominence  in  manifold  forms  be- 
cause no  phase  of  individual  endowment  is 
strange  or  alien  to  its  embrace.  Just  because 
it  is  so  fundamental  in  human  nature  religion 
uses  every  channel  which  human  nature  offers 
through  which  to  express  itself,  and  cannot  be 
restrained  of  expression  any  more  than  a  sun- 
beam can  be  repressed  in  shining  because  the 
medium  through  which  it  shines  happens  to  be 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


blue  or  green  or  violet.  The  light  of  the  sun 
is  behind  all  the  colors  of  the  spectrum,  and  is 
manifest  within  them,  and  they  all  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  true  light  which  lighteneth  every 
color  entering  into  the  atmosphere  which  en- 
wraps the  world  of  vision.  This  analogy  holds 
good  in  the  realm  of  spiritual  life,  and  the  Book 
of  Devotion,  which  would  train  the  spiritual 
vision  both  to  perceive  and  receive  the  divine 
light,  must  awaken  and  deepen  the  recognition 
of  a  common  religious  life  in  many  divergent 
manifestations,  and  acknowledge  an  essential 
unity  of  religious  hope  and  aspiration  in  mani- 
fold varieties  of  expression.  Otherwise  it  could 
never  be  a  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

The  permanence,  however,  of  variety  in  types 
of  religious  character  need  not  introduce  per- 
manent confusion  into  our  idea  of  a  common 
religious  life,  or  of  its  value  and  eternal  sig- 
nificance for  every  individual  as  for  the  whole 
race.  The  peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness, 
ripened  in  varying  atmospheres  of  religious 
devotion,  vindicate  their  genuineness,  though 
their  special  forms  and  flavors  may  suggest  also 
their  limitations  and  deficiencies.  The  mystic 


8  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

and  the  rational  thinker;  the  man  submerged 
in  the  flow  of  subjective  emotion,  and  the  man 
buttressed  by  the  strong  conviction  of  objective 
truth ;  one  whose  whole  instinct  is  practical 
action,  and  another  whose  irresistible  trend  is 
to  theoretical  speculation ;  all  these,  and  many 
other  types  have  vindicated  their  right  to  be 
by  the  beauty  of  their  personal  piety  and  by 
the  value  of  their  contributions  to  Christian 
thought,  in  its  discrimination  as  well  as  in  its 
application  of  Christian  truth.  Through  all 
these  divergences  there  has  run  one  common 
constant  stream  of  divine  reality.  The  variance 
discernible  in  the  individuals  composing  the 
Apostolic  College,  afterwards  incorporated  and 
expressed  in  schools  or  classes  of  men;  the 
calm  practicalness  of  James,  the  speculative 
elevation  of  John,  the  emotive  ardor  of  Peter, 
the  sagacious  activity  of  Andrew,  the  reclusive 
devotion  of  Nathaniel,  the  doubting  faithfulness 
of  Thomas,  the  spiritual  rationality  of  Paul ;  all 
this  variance  at  the  source  has  been,  as  it  must 
ever  be,  repeated  in  the  stream,  as  that  has 
gathered  volume  from  the  rills  poured  into  it 
all  along  its  course,  until  it  has  become  the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


majestic  movement  of  the  River  of  God,  which 
holds  within  its  murmur  the  voice  of  many 
waters.  How  distinctively  poorer  the  Christian 
world  had  been  without  the  special  gift  and  apti- 
tude of  Origen  and  Augustine,  of  Tauler  and 
a  Kempis,  of  More  the  Catholic  and  Leighton 
the  Protestant,  or  in  latter  days  in  the  Anglican 
Communion  of  Keble  the  sweet  singer,  and 
Arnold  the  strong  teacher.  Yes,  within  the 
compass  of  the  Anglican  Communion  itself, 
without  searching  through  the  records  of  Ori- 
ental, or  Roman,  or  German,  or  non-conforming 
English  Christianity,  the  essential  Christian  life, 
in  infinite  and  inspiring  variety,  has  been  fed  and 
nurtured  and  strengthened  by  the  manna  from 
heaven  gathered  in  this  receptacle  of  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer.  Every  school  has  so  really 
found  there  the  food  convenient  for  it  that  each 
variant  type  has  claimed  it  for  its  very  own.  And 
the  claim  has  been  verified  by  the  result,  and 
is  to  be  vindicated  in  all  soberness  because  the 
Prayer  Book  has  been  to  each  type  or  school 
its  own,  while  not  merely  its  own.  It  has  been 
so  much  to  each  because  it  has  been  more  than 
each  could  discern,  namely,  the  purveyor  of 


I0  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

that  fundamental  Christian  life  which  underlies 
all  types  of  Christian  living  and  thinking,  and  is 
greater  than  them  all,  and  which  is  so  irrepres- 
sible and  inevitable  that  it  must  press  into  and 
express  itself  out  of  all  the  variable  conditions 
of  the  soul's  existence.  It  is  like  nature,  which 
carries  its  regnant  law  into  the  tropics  as  well 
as  to  the  poles,  indefinitely  variable  because  in- 
dubitably one  and  insistent  and  indestructible. 
No  circumstance  is  competent  to  circumscribe 
its  activity,  and  no  situation  adequate  to  an- 
nihilate its  vitality. 

It  is  the  contribution  of  the  Book  of  Com- 
mon Prayer  to  the  development  of  this  great 
underlying  Christian  life  of  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men  which  we  are  to  consider  in 
these  pages.  "  And,"  to  quote  the  admira- 
ble language  of  Bishop  Gailor  of  Tennessee, 
"whatever  else  may  be  said  of  the  type  of 
Christianity  which  that  book  sets  forth,  it  can- 
not be  said  that  it  is  morbid  or  unhealthy  or 
anything  but  sane  in  its  views  of  man  and 
God;  or  that  its  ideal  is  cramped  and  con- 
fined in  the  intellectual  mould  of  any  particular 
party  or  sect  or  set  of  men ;  or  that  the  beauty 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


of  holiness  and  the  standard  of  righteousness 
which  it  inculcates  is  less  than  sufficient  for 
the  high  and  noble  and  splendid  satisfaction 
of  human  nature  in  its  best  endeavor  for 
truth  and  freedom." 

I  judge  that  this  will  become  apparent  as 
we  study  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  more 
closely. 


I2  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


CHAPTER  II 

PRAYER  THE  ROOT  OF  THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


ideal  of  the  Christian  Life  and  the 
contribution  of  the  Prayer  Book  to  it 
is  foreshadowed  by  certain  features  of  that 
Book,  which  may  be  read  in  its  title  and  seen 
before  one  opens  its  covers. 

The  Title  is  very  significant.  We  have  before 
us  a  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  Its  effort  to 
lead  and  educate  the  Christian  flock  is  founded 
primarily  in  devotion,  not  in  instruction.  It 
is  not  chiefly  a  statement  of  the  faith  addressed 
to  the  understanding,  though  it  contains  a  con- 
fession of  the  faith  as  an  act  of  worship.  Its 
appeal  is  to  the  heart  and  conscience  through 
the  act  (which  it  essays  to  guide)  of  man's 
approach  to  God.  If  it  be  true  that,  as  Nean- 
der  held,  "  Pectus  est  quod  fecit  Theologum"  the 
Prayer  Book's  unwritten  motto  is,  "  It  is  the 
heart  which  makes  the  Christian."  Its  very 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  13 

conception  of  the  ideal  of  man's  life  is  grounded 
on  his  right  relation  to  God  and  right  approach 
to  him.  Its  system  is  Theo-centric.  It  finds 
the  root  of  all  true  living  not  chiefly  in  man's  ex- 
ternal or  natural  relation  to  God,  but  essentially 
in  his  spiritual  contact  with  Him.  The  physi- 
cal law  of  man's  natural  environment  is  truly 
a  Divine  law,  and  is  significant  of  a  direct  rela- 
tion to  God  through  man's  physical  life;  and 
were  this  physical  or  natural  relation  regarded 
as  chief  it  would  involve,  first  of  all  things,  the 
education  of  the  natural  faculties  and  an  athletic 
discipline.  But  this,  while  important,  is  subsid- 
iary. Nor  is  man's  relation  to  God  as  Moral 
Governor  the  supreme  relation  even.  This  rela- 
tion of  moral  accountability  for  our  actions  is 
intimate  and  sacred,  and  brings  the  soul  into 
instant  and  conscious  contact  with  God's  mind 
and  will,  as  expressed  in  the  moral  law.  But  the 
regulation  of  conduct  yields  in  importance  to  the 
regulation  of  the  heart  and  will  from  which  con- 
duct springs.  That  out  of  which  proceed  the 
issues  of  life  indicates  the  point  of  ultimate  con- 
tact of  man  with  God.  The  supreme  relation  is 
the  relation  of  the  spirit  of  man  to  the  Spirit  of 


THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 


God,  the  contact  of  person  with  person,  the 
touch  of  the  human  individuality  with  the 
Divine  Being.  And  all  this  finds  the  expression 
of  its  reality  in  the  direct  appeal  of  prayer  and 
praise.  It  discovers  the  inspiration  of  its  life  in 
the  apprehension  of  a  Divine  watch  and  ward, 
and  the  salutary  control  of  life  in  the  recog- 
nition of  a  Divine  responsibility.  In  other 
words,  according  to  the  Prayer  Book,  Religion 
is  the  basis  of  the  moral  and  ideal  life  of  man ; 
of  which  religion,  Benjamin  Whichcote  wrote  so 
finely  in  the  seventeenth  century,  when  he  said, 
"  Its  seat  is  the  inward  man,  it  is  the  first  sense 
of  his  soul,  the  temper  of  his  mind,  the  pulse  of 
his  heart." 

And  this  is  quite  in  accord  with  the  postulate 
of  that  rare  philosophic  thinker  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  Richard  Rkthe,  who  affirms  in 
his  Christian  Ethics  that  the  God-conscious- 
ness in  man  is  the  only  explanation  of  his  self- 
consciousness.  For  the  self-consciousness  of 
man  only  thoroughly  comprehends  itself  when 
it  realizes  its  dependence  on  the  Divine,  its  cor- 
relation with  the  Divine,  and  its  aspiration  for 
the  Divine.  The  underlying  conception  of  the 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


being  whom  prayer  is  to  guide,  elevate,  and  con- 
sole is  "Man  as  God's  child."     The   ideal  of 
his  life  is  that  eternal  life  which  is  to  know  God 
and  Jesus  Christ,  whom  He  has  sent.     It  is  the 
life  immortal  held  within  the  shrine  of  mortal- 
ity.    Duty  to  such  a  being  can  never  be  what 
some   scientific    inquirers   into   the   genesis    of 
morals  catalogue  it,  "  the  sum  of  the  prudential 
experiences  of  mankind."     Its  mandate  is  heard 
as  the  echo  of  that  imperative  voice  of  God 
which  brings  the  eternal  law  of  His  own  being 
into  the  sphere   of  man's   temporal   existence 
and  so  renders  the  earthly  life  eternal  in  its 
quality,  a  valid  though  transient  manifestation 
of  the  eternal  reality  of  God.     The  genesis  of 
such  a  soul  can  never  rest  in  its  natural  history. 
Like  its   Lord  and  Master,  when  once  it  has 
reached  the  final  Adam  it  says  of  him  "who 
was  the  Son  of  God."     Its  quality  cannot  be 
measured  or  gauged   by  the  form  or  manner 
of  its    temporal    development,    by   the   stages 
which  the  physical  organization  of  the  race  as 
of  the  individual  may  have  passed  through,  by 
the  refinement  or  the  frailty  of  its  mechanism, 
by  the  instruments  it  uses  to  plan,  or  think,  or 


l6  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

act,  in  fine,  by  the  house  in  which  it  dwells. 
The  master  mind  itself  proclaims  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  Spirit  over  the  conditions  which 
encompass  it,  and  subordinates  the  limitations 
which  these  conditions  impose  on  its  action  to 
the  range  of  its  own  purpose,  which  it  is  restless 
to  attempt  even  if  it  cannot  wholly  achieve  its 
resistless  impulse  for  advance  and  enlargement. 
Thus  the  very  fact  that  a  Book  of  Devotion  is 
furnished  as  the  essential  nutriment  of  life  pro- 
claims the  ideal  of  that  life  to  be  one  which 
is  God-given,  God-controlled,  God-crowned.  It 
embodies  by  its  very  appearance  the  challenge 
of  Tennyson's  question,  "  What  matters  it  how 
much  a  man  knows  and  does  if  he  keep  not  a 
reverential  looking  upwards?  he  is  only  the 
subtlest  beast  in  the  field  then." 

This  vivid  and  practical  apprehension  of  the 
Divine  and  the  Eternal  as  the  moulding  germ 
of  the  ideal  life  of  man  gives  tone  to  all  the 
afterthought  concerning  man's  culture  and  des- 
tiny. If  it  invests  life  with  a  solemnity  of 
responsibility,  it  is  yet  the  solemnity  of  high 
station  and  of  boundless  possibilities.  It  is 
not  the  solemnity  of  gloom  and  disheartenment 


THE   CHRISTIAN'  LIFE  1 7 

such  as  comes  and  must  come  of  an  atheistic 
or  agnostic  conception  of  man,  which  finds 
no  splendid  purpose  writ  in  his  constitution, 
and  no  discernible  or  lasting  outcome  of  his 
achievements  or  aspirations ;  which  regards  God 
simply  as  an  unknown  force  which  it  is  hopeless 
to  resist,  as  it  is  hopeless  to  try  in  the  least  to 
comprehend ;  and  which  reduces  humanity  to  a 
perpetual  orphanage,  since  the  lower  creation 
cannot  explain  him,  and  the  higher  as  constantly 
eludes  him.  If  in  his  temporal  existence  man 
may  even  in  a  theistic  conception  be  com- 
pared to  the  vapor  or  the  flower,  short-lived 
indeed,  but  whose  origin  we  know  and  whose 
fruitfulness  does  not  die  with  their  disappear- 
ance, yet  such  a  conception  removes  him  far 
from  the  horror  of  being  likened  to  a  mere 
breath  whose  existence  is  simply  a  vibration 
of  an  all-pervading  atmosphere,  which  vibra- 
tion, as  philosophers  tell  us,  has  existence  but 
no  being,  its  transitoriness  being  all  there  is 
of  it  as  individually  distinct  from  the  general 
substance  which  underlies  all  things.  The  rec- 
ognition of  God  in  prayer  is  a  recognition  of 
relation,  a  relation  which  is  not  a  servitude 


i8 


but  a  sonship ;  a  relation  of  intercourse  as  well 
as  of  obedience.  The  recognition  of  prayer 
moreover  is  one  of  mutual  relation.  It  recog- 
nizes not  only  that  "  in  Him  we  live  and  move 
and  have  our  being,"  absolutely  and  without 
limit,  but  also  that  relatively  "in  us  He  lives 
and  moves  and  has  His  being."  The  two  once 
recognized  cannot  exist  apart,  but  must  move 
on  together.  On  man's  part  the  voice  of  that 
mutual  relation  is  prayer,  — 

"A  breath  which  fleets  beyond  this  iron  world, 
And  touches  him  who  made  it." 

On  God's  part  it  is  Revelation  by  that  eternal 
Word  which  lighteth  every  man  coming  into  the 
world. 

The  ideal  of  our  life  then  of  which  devotion  is 
the  ultimate  factor  is  life  not  only  given,  con- 
trolled, and  crowned  by  God,  but  also  God- 
accompanied.  It  is  an  ideal  which  is  fulfilled 
only  by  the  worship  which  opens  the  heart  and 
life  fully  and  freely  to  the  Divine  influence  and 
companionship.  Prayer  is  the  vital  breath  of 
this  ennobled  life,  prayer  which  is,  to  quote 
the  great  Laureate  once  more,  "  like  opening 
a  sluice  between  the  great  ocean  and  our  little 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


channels,  when  the  great  sea  gathers  itself  to- 
gether and  flows  in  at  full  tide." 

All  objections  to  the  sanity  of  prayer  are 
based  upon  an  ideal  of  life  below  that  which  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer  presupposes  and  holds 
up  before  us.  If  the  human  spirit  is  akin  to  the 
Divine,  so  as  to  recognize  it  and  aspire  toward 
it  and  find  its  own  completion  alone  in  it,  then 
prayer  as  the  expression  of  its  longing  is  as 
natural  and  rational  as  a  child's  proffered  sup- 
plication for  his  Father's  love  and  guidance. 
It  is  pseudo  piety  by  reason  of  its  shallowness, 
though  it  take  on  the  guise  of  reverence,  to 
regard,  as  some  natural  philosophers  would  have 
us  regard,  prayer  as  an  impertinent  dictation 
of  ignorance  to  supreme  wisdom.  The  law 
of  God  by  which  he  rules,  say  these,  is  fixed 
from  the  beginning  in  the  reason  of  his  own 
being,  and  therefore  must  be  immutable  and 
irresponsive  to  any  and  all  appeal.  But  prayer 
is  not  the  spirit's  appeal  against  God's  law  which 
emanates  from  his  being;  it  is  the  striving  of 
the  soul  to  come  into  full  accord  with  that 
being,  and  so  with  the  law  which  reveals  him. 
Prayer  simply  discerns  by  its  fine  instinct  that 


20  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

spiritual  law  which  binds  all  spiritual  life 
together  and  instinctively  affirms  life  by  spirit- 
ual intercourse  and  sympathy  and  companion- 
ship and  request  and  response  to  be  the 
imperative  condition  of  its  being,  an  uttermost 
law  of  life  underrunning  all  special  laws  of  its 
expression.  The  ultimate  utterance  of  all  prayer 
is,  "  My  soul  is  athirst  for  God,  for  the  living 
God :  when  shall  I  come  and  appear  before 
God?"  Thus  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  pattern 
and  condensation  of  all  possible  petition,  which 
brings  man's  whole  life  of  physical  necessity, 
of  moral  need,  of  spiritual  enlightenment  and 
guidance,  up  into  the  realm  of  God's  thought 
and  benediction,  the  undertone  of  it  all  is  that 
grand  diapason,  "Thy  will  be  done."  It  is  the 
voice  vibrant  with  an  irrepressible  demand  for 
spiritual  unison  with  the  central  spirit  which 
moves  and  lives  in  all  things,  never  a  petulant 
cry  to  subordinate  God's  decree  of  wisdom  to 
man's  impatience  of  His  restrictive  discipline. 
Thus  it  is  that  the  very  possibility  of  prayer 
sets  the  ideal  of  life  very  high.  It  gives  it  an 
enduring  spiritual  reality  which  craves  and  can- 
not be  content  without  that  eternal  life  which  is 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  21 

in  the  Father  and  in  his  Son,  Jesus  Christ. 
Hence  life  comes  to  light  in  its  immortality  in 
God,  as  its  source  is  recognized  as  in  him,  and 
its  sustenance  as  alone  of  him.  It  is  revealed, 
to  quote  Whichcote  once  more,  as  "  A  Divine 
nature  in  us,  a  Divine  assistance  over  us." 

It  was  Lessing  who  said,  with  his  character- 
istic sagacity,  "  Man's  ideal  never  reaches  be- 
yond his  Gods,"  and  the  ideal  elevation  of  man 
which  is  the  postulate  of  Prayer  finds  its  reason- 
able basis  in  the  nature  and  character  of  God 
which  it  implies.  For  He  who  heareth  prayer 
is  not  a  remote  or  an  indifferent  Deity.  Im- 
personal force  is  not  the  occupant  of  the  throne 
of  the  universe  if  that  force  have  an  ear  to 
hear ;  nor  does  the  intelligence  which  inhabits 
it  sit  apart  in  its  impassiveness  while  only  keen 
in  its  scrutiny.  God  who  heareth  prayer  is  not 
only  "the  King,  eternal,  immortal,  invisible," 
though  his  being  fulfils  that  majestic  ascrip- 
tion of  St.  Paul.  He  is  the  father  of  the  family 
of  mankind.  "  He  remembereth  our  frame,  and 
considereth  that  we  are  dust " ;  and,  "  like  as 
a  father  pitieth  his  children,"  stands  ready  to 
answer  their  appeal  and  draw  them  within  the 


22  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

sphere  of  his  loving  communion.  There  is 
a  kinship  of  mutual  understanding  involved  in 
the  offices  of  prayer,  and  there  is  involved  an 
ascription  of  humanity  to  God,  as  well  as  of 
divineness  to  man  in  it.  It  makes  humanity 
a  reflection  of  the  Divine  in  which  God  sees 
his  image  and  is  thus  responsive  to  its  appeal, 
and  it  gives  a  sacredness  to  all  human  attributes 
and  relations  to  find  their  prototype  in  God. 
Out  of  this  comes  the  possibility  and  the 
naturalness  —  so  to  speak  in  protest  against  the 
assertion  of  the  impossibility  and  unnatural- 
ness —  of  the  Incarnation  wherein  God  truly 
comes  unto  his  own.  Herein  we  find  the 
ground  of  our  Divine  Master's  claim  not  only 
of  service  but  of  heart  companionship  from 
his  followers  when  he  says,  "  I  call  you  no  more 
servants,  but  I  have  called  you  friends,"  — 
a  relation  we  must  deem  impossible  between 
Divine  power  and  human  weakness,  were  there 
not  a  nexus  binding  both  in  indissoluble  union. 
Thus  prayer,  while  it  gives  us  the  pervasiveness 
of  pantheism,  delivers  us  from  its  absorption 
of  the  Divine  in  the  human,  an  absorption 
which  would  remove  all  play  of  free  will 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


23 


homage  from  man's  service  to  God,  and  in- 
volve God  in  all  the  moral  aberration  and 
sinfulness  which  the  abuse  of  that  free  will 
creates  in  man ;  which  would  make  God  the 
repudiator  of  his  own  righteousness,  unless  sin 
is  declared  to  be  no  sin. 

So  much  we  learn  from  prayer  as  petition. 
But  praise  is  permanently  involved  in  prayer 
as  well  as  petition,  because  the  undertone  of 
prayer  is  praise,  being  the  ascription  of  power 
to  him  whose  aid  is  sought,  and  of  the  grace 
which  will  grant  it,  for  without  these  two,  might 
and  love,  prayer  would  be  a  plea  to  impotence 
or  an  appeal  to  an  indifferent  or  a  vindictive 
heart.  He  who  proffers  his  request  irresistibly 
exhales  the  incense  of  thanksgiving.  The  very 
attitude  of  prayer  is  adoration,  and  he  who  seeks 
by  prayer  to  live  in  God's  communion  lives  in 
that  high  realm  of  exultation  which  is  exal- 
tation ;  as  the  Apostle  phrases  it,  a  "  sitting 
together  in  heavenly  places,"  a  "  conversation 
which  is  in  heaven,"  a  "  coming  unto  Mount 
Zion  and  an  innumerable  company  of  angels  " ; 
or  as  Bunyan  quaintly  describes  it  of  his  pil- 
grims, "  a  being  in  heaven  before  we  get  at 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


it";  or,  as  Wordsworth  translates  it  into  the 
serene  poetry  of  the  Lake  country,  a  "  moving 
about  in  worlds  not  realized."  That  is,  this 
praiseful  element  of  life  lends  it  a  spiritual 
glow  which  witnesses  to  rays  of  light  falling 
on  it  from  beyond  the  sphere  of  sun  and  moon 
and  stars, 

"  Where  every  soul  shines  as  the  sun, 
And  God  himself  gives  light." 

Thus  the  praiseful  element  of  prayer  imparts 
as  it  implies  a  conscious  or  unconscious  enthu- 
siasm, which  makes  life  vital,  and  stimulates 
courage  and  endeavor.  It  brings  also  the 
peace  of  submission,  because  it  has  the  wit- 
ness in  itself  that  life  is  not  all  of  the  earth 
earthy,  imprisoned  in  physical  forces,  limited  in 
its  range  to  transient  achievement,  or  as  the 
fine  old  hymn  has  it,  "  vexed  with  trifling 
cares."  And  this  because  the  soul  can  never 
find  a  full  expression  of  itself  in  the  mere 
reading  aloud  of  its  physical  laws,  but  is 
impelled  to  utter  its  tribute  of  thanksgiving 
to  Him  whose  outer  garment  the  laws  of  matter 
weave,  but  whom  himself  to  know  alone  satis- 
fies its  longing  and  is  its  eternal  life. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


CHAPTER   III 

COMMON  PRAYER  INDICATIVE  OF  SOCIAL 
CHRISTIAN   LIFE 


r  I  ""HE  high  ideal  of  life,  which  is  involved 
-*-  in  the  thought  of  it  as  a  life  of  which 
prayer  and  praise  are  the  essential  expression, 
is  not  and  cannot  be  individual  merely.  It 
finds  its  full  realization  only  in  so  far  as  it  is 
communal,  or  involved  with  the  life  and  move- 
ment of  other  men.  So  at  least  the  title  —  for 
as  yet  we  have  not  looked  into  its  contents  — 
of  our  Book  of  Devotion  indicates.  It  is  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer.  It  is  the  Book  of 
the  congregation,  the  Book  not  of  the  indi- 
vidual Christian  only,  but  of  the  Church.  It 
is,  so  to  speak,  not  only  the  common  property 
of  Christians,  but  their  property  in  common. 
They  must,  to  fulfil  its  full  purpose,  use  it 
together.  As  such  it  is  distinguished  from 
many  of  the  manuals  out  of  which  it  is  made 
up.  It  implies  the  expectation  of  a  common 


26  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

movement  in  worship,  not  merely  of  many 
separate  acts  of  devotion  in  the  same  place, 
joined  together  in  one  only  at  some  special 
crisis  in  the  service  to  which  each  turns  to  give 
momentary  attention  and  then  lapses  back 
to  its  own  individual  pre-occupation.  This 
is  the  Roman  use,  from  which  the  English 
service  was  reformed,  when  once  the  Angli- 
can Communion  threw  off  the  bonds  of  the 
Papal  authority.  That  practice  has  been 
eloquently  defended  and  described  by  its  ad- 
vocates as  the  more  life-like,  the  more  compre- 
hensive, the  more  natural.  Such  is  Cardinal 
Newman's  description  of  the  service  of  the  Mass, 
with  its  attendant  congregation  each  absorbed 
in  his  own  private  devotion.  "Each,"  he 
writes,  "  in  his  place,  with  his  own  heart,  with 
his  own  wants,  with  his  own  thoughts,  with 
his  own  intention,  with  his  own  prayers 
separate  but  concordant,  watching  what  is 
going  on,  watching  its  progress,  uniting  in 
its  consummation;  not  painfully  and  hope- 
lessly following  a  hard  form  of  prayer  from 
beginning  to  end,  but  like  a  concert  of  musi- 
cal instruments,  each  different,  but  concur- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


27 


ring  in  a  sweet  harmony,  we  take  our  part  with 
God's  priest,  supporting  him,  yet  guided  by 
him.  There  are  little  children  there,  and  old 
men,  and  simple  laborers,  and  students  in 
seminaries,  priests  preparing  for  mass,  priests 
making  their  thanksgiving,  .  .  .  but  out  of 
these  many  minds  rises  one  eucharistic  hymn, 
and  the  Great  Action  is  the  Measure  and  the 
Scope  of  it."  The  resonant  bell  sounds  to 
call  the  attention  to  it.  But  the  English  service 
requires  no  bell  to  remind  the  congregation 
that  a  special  part  of  the  service  is  about  to 
come.  All  are  intent  on  the  same  office, 
all  are  moving  together  towards  the  one  goal. 
The  service  at  the  altar  is  the  people's  service ; 
the  officiating  priest  is  the  mouthpiece  of  the 
attentive  as  well  as  attending  priestly  people. 
He  is  not  doing  something  for  them  apart  from 
them,  most  of  which  they  cannot  hear,  none 
of  which  they  need  to  follow.  He  is  leading 
them.  They  hear  and  follow  his  voice,  for  it 
is  not  the  voice  of  the  stranger,  it  is  theirs 
also.  The  introduction  of  the  reminding  bell 
in  Anglican  worship  would  be  an  inconsistent 
intrusion  and  a  bald  and  senseless  plagiarism. 


2g  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

For  the  English  thought  is  to  unite  the  peo- 
ple, to  bring  them  through  common  worship 
to  the  recognition  of  their  common  life,  the 
common  life  of  devotion,  and  of  ordinary 
association  and  intercourse.  The  pervasive 
unity  of  the  Christian  body  is  the  basis  of  the 
Common  Prayer.  It  is  founded  on  the  thought 
which  St.  Paul  expresses,  that  "  we  are  mem- 
bers one  of  another,"  so  that  if  one  rejoice 
or  sorrow,  all  rejoice  and  sorrow  with  that 
one,  and  moulded  on  the  idea  Goethe  so 
well  expresses  when  he  writes, 

"  Es  bildet  ein  Talent  sich  in  der  Stille 
Sich  ein  Charakter  in  dem  Strom  der  Welt," 

which  may  be  freely  rendered, 

"A  special  gift  may  be  evolved  apart, 
But  character  amid  life's  common  stream." 

Common  worship  points  directly  to  the 
ideal  Christian  life  as  led  among  one's  fellow 
men ;  as  a  life  of  engagedness  in  life's  common 
tasks,  a  life  involved  in  the  common  yet  divine 
relations  of  the  family  and  of  the  state ;  a  life 
in  which  diligence  in  business  is  not  alien  from 
fervency  of  spirit,  but  is  a  legitimate  expression 
and  illustration  of  "  serving  the  Lord."  The 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


29 


religious  life  is  not  by  the  Common  Prayer 
marked  off  as  the  life  especially  of  particular 
little  communities,  sets,  sects,  guilds,  brother- 
hoods, conventual  as  bound  by  a  restrictive  rule ; 
but  rather  as  the  broad  life  of  humanity  based 
on  the  moral  rule  of  Christ's  word  and  life,  who 
himself  came  eating  and  drinking,  was  found 
in  society  as  well  as  in  the  church,  and  sent 
his  disciples  into  the  world,  not  out  of  it.  As 
he  came  into  the  world  and  sanctified  mar- 
riage by  his  presence  and  first  miracle,  and  into 
the  workshop  of  Nazareth  where  he  elevated 
the  work  of  the  hands  into  a  daily  living  sacri- 
fice of  our  powers  to  God,  and  mingled  with 
the  family  life  of  the  poor  and  the  festivities 
and  banquets  of  the  rich,  leaving  the  imprint 
of  divine  consecration  on  all  of  them,  so  the 
common  worship  of  Him  involves  the  common 
life  in  Him,  and  marks  the  lawyer,  the  physi- 
cian, the  merchant,  the  mechanic,  the  artist,  the 
musician,  as  responsive  to  a  divine  calling,  as 
well  as  the  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons,  albeit 
in  differing  departments  of  the  one  great  service 
of  God.  He  who  gives  the  cup  of  cold  water 
is  rendering  as  truly  worshipful  service  to  God 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


as  he  who  bears  "  the  chalice  of  the  grapes  of 
God."  He  has  met  as  distinct  recognition  in 
the  words  of  the  Master,  and  his  reward  is  as 
distinctly  spoken  by  his  sacred  lips. 

As  common  worship  indicates  a  common  un- 
dertone of  service  in  the  Christian  body  whose 
members  are  variously  occupied,  so  it  suggests 
that  view  of  worship  in  work  which  sanctifies 
the  whole  week  and  consecrates  the  outer  tem- 
ple of  God's  world,  as  well  as  the  inner  temple 
of  the  sanctuary  which  man  has  builded.  And 
that  view  is  this,  that  in  every  legitimate  occu- 
pation, made  legitimate  by  its  ministry  to  the 
essential  wants  of  man  in  the  enlargement 
and  enrichment  of  his  capacity,  which  is  God's 
endowment  of  his  nature,  we  are  to  find  an  op- 
portunity to  meet  God  and  receive  his  spirit 
into  our  life,  according  as  our  work  is  done  in 
the  spirit  of  Christ,  as  part  of  the  soul's  life  in 
Him  and  in  his  world.  In  this  view  the  common 
worship  of  the  sanctuary  indicates  the  common 
worship  of  life,  so  that  man  is  never  to  view 
himself  as  apart  from  God,  not  merely  because 
he  is  always  living  under  his  ken,  but  because 
he  may  be  always  rendering  unto  Him  accept- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


able  service  and  be  always  coming  into  direct 
unison  with  him.  Of  course  this  does  not 
discourage  or  forbid  certain  offices  and  fra- 
ternities or  sisterhoods,  guilds,  communities, 
as  certain  exigencies  may  arise  requiring  their 
special  efficiency.  But  these  are  special  for 
specific  ends,  and  the  Prayer  Book  knows  them 
not.  These  come  and  go  as  the  exigencies 
of  life  call  out  for  them  or  call  out  against 
them.  But  the  broad  life  of  humanity  goes 
on  forever,  the  life  of  the  family,  the  life  of 
society,  the  life  of  business  activity,  the  life  of 
the  state.  These  constitute  the  permanent  reli- 
gious sphere  and  those  living  in  the  pure 
discharge  of  their  duties  as  a  spiritual  function 
are  the  Religious  par  excellence.  Here  we  are 
to  look  for  the  great  achievements  in  the  King- 
dom of  Righteousness,  which  is  the  Kingdom  of 
God,  just  as  it  is  that  along  the  hillsides  and 
in  the  valleys  and  upon  the  broad  plains,  and 
not  chiefly  in  the  conservatories  and  glass 
houses,  we  are  to  look  for  the  harvests  which 
feed  the  world. 

This  common  service  as  a  common  worship 
by  humanity,  suggested  in  the  Common  Prayer, 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


indicates  another  correlated  feature  of  the  nor- 
mal Christian  life  It  is  the  service  of  God  in 
the  service  of  men,  i.  e.  the  going  about  doing 
good.  To  build  the  temple  of  a  renewed  soul 
is  better  than  to  build  a  cathedral;  to  regen- 
erate a  community  or  a  corner  of  a  commu- 
nity is  to  cause  to  be  builded  together  as  lively 
stones  those  in  whom  God  dwells.  The  awful 
but  benignant  sanction  of  the  judgment,  as 
portrayed  by  Christ,  is  too  emphatic  to  allow 
any  one  to  blink  at  the  worship  of  God  con- 
tained in  the  kindly  and  helpful  service  of 
mankind.  The  Son  of  Man  is  discerned  and 
served  in  the  sons  of  men.  And  when  the 
Divine  Master  picked  out  the  imprisoned,  the 
impoverished,  the  sick  lying  uselessly  by  in  pain, 
as  his  especial  representatives,  he  struck  a  note 
of  hope  for  all  men  as  he  bade  us  go  forth  and 
minister  unto  them  as  unto  him.  We  seem 
to  see  little  of  the  Son  of  Man  in  these  sons  of 
men.  But  his  eye  pierced  through  all  their 
degradation  and  criminality,  through  all  their 
ignorant  and  stained  condition,  through  all 
their  pain  and  uselessness,  and  descried  the 
secret  shrine  in  every  heart  where  the  Divine 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


33 


Word,  which  lighteth  every  man  coming  into 
the  world,  was  whispering  and  striving  to  shine  in 
the  darkness  which  comprehended  it  not.  Out 
of  such  he  declares  may  come  beings  trans- 
formed by  the  renewing  of  their  mind ;  so  that 
they  who  walk  in  darkness  may  see  a  great 
light,  and  they  who  sit  in  the  shadow  of  death 
unto  them  may  the  light  shine.  Thus  the  wor- 
ship of  ministry  for  him  is  not  simply  an  ex- 
pression of  the  lips,  but  an  action  of  the  life. 
It  is  hopeful  and  inspiring  with  its  boundless 
possibility  of  bringing  in  "the  Christ  that  is 
to  be." 

This  common  life  of  service  in  the  world, 
foreshadowed  by  the  life  of  common  worship 
in  the  sanctuary,  gives  suggestive  assurance 
also  that  the  ideal  of  Christian  life  is  life  in  a 
Kingdom  of  God  here  on  earth.  Safe  trans- 
ference to  another  sphere  of  being  is  not  the 
Church's  only  end  and  aim.  The  great  here- 
after is  indeed  an  object  of  anticipation  and  of 
preparation,  but  preparation  for  true  life  be- 
yond is  the  preservation  and  propagation  of 
true  life  here.  This  earth  is  the  especial  sphere 
of  reality  and  duty  now;  and  into  it  are  to 
3 


34 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


come  the  life  and  law  of  God,  to  transform  it, 
not  merely  individual  souls  in  it,  but  its  man- 
ners, laws,  principles,  institutions,  into  an  habi- 
tation of  God  through  the  spirit.  Thus  the 
kingdoms  of  this  world  shall  become  the  King- 
dom of  God,  a  kingdom  which  while  not  of 
this  world  is  to  be  in  this  world,  the  final  an- 
swer to  that  fruitful  prayer  of  word  and  work, 
"Thy  Kingdom  come."  The  ideal  of  the  Chris- 
tian life  is  the  Kingdom  of  Righteousness,  in  the 
sense  that  society  shall  constitute  a  righteous 
organism  founded  in  the  truth,  not  in  the  mere 
expediency  of  transient  policies.  That  Kingdom 
is  not  meant  to  be  simply  an  instrument  for  the 
alleviation  of  temporal  necessities,  but  a  vehi- 
cle for  permeating  the  whole  life  of  the  com- 
munity and  the  state  with  the  eternal  princi- 
ples of  God's  love  and  justice,  so  that  he  shall 
reign  in  it  not  merely  by  control  as  now,  but 
as  the  inspiration  of  its  life  and  the  moulder  of 
its  manners,  enshrined  in  its  institutions,  posi- 
tively expressed  in  its  laws,  and  alive  and 
recognized  in  all  the  relations  of  its  life,  as 
these  come  to  reflect  the  righteousness  and 
mercy  and  purity  and  love  which  shone  forth 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


35 


in  the  word  and  life  of  His  well  beloved  Son. 
For  the  correlation  of  prayer  is  response,  and 
the  church  is  not  forever  to  go  on  praying 
without  an  answer.  The  supplication,  "  Thy 
will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,"  is  not 
a  phrase  without  a  meaning,  a  wish  deprived  of 
certain  expectation.  In  it  the  church  passes 
out  beyond  itself,  as  a  shrine  of  worship  and 
spiritual  discipline  for  individual  souls,  into  the 
larger  sphere  of  all  man's  interests  and  en- 
gagedness  in  the  world,  which  it  is  to  leaven 
with  its  own  truth  and  grace  until  the  whole 
be  leavened.  The  normal  Christian  life  is  life 
in  this  Kingdom  come  and  to  come. 

Thus  we  have  lingered  at  the  portal  of  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  read  the  inscrip- 
tion written  on  it,  that  we  might  gain  some 
intimation  of  the  Christian  Life  it  presupposes 
and  to  which  it  seeks  to  minister.  We  shall 
open  its  covers  and  look  at  its  pages  in  the 
next  and  following  chapters  to  see  how  it  fulfils 
the  promise  of  its  inspiring  title. 


36  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  CHRISTIAN   LIFE  AS  INTELLIGENT 

opening  the  covers  of  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  a  glance  at  its  pages 
reveals  a  suggestive  element  of  its  contents 
even  before  we  read  a  single  sentence  of  them. 
It  is  an  English  book,  a  circumstance  which 
strikes  us  as  inevitable  in  a  manual  written 
for  the  English  race,  but  which,  when  the 
Prayer  Book  was  compiled,  was  a  startling 
innovation  in  the  usage  of  Western  Christen- 
dom. Latin  is  what  any  Churchman  would 
have  naturally  been  led  to  expect  at  that 
time,  since  in  that  language  the  services  of 
the  Church  of  Rome  (which  before  the  Refor- 
mation dominated  Western  Christendom)  had 
for  centuries  been  conducted.  It  may  seem 
strange  that  the  speech  of  a  Pagan  people 
should  have  become  the  ecclesiastical  usage, 
and  that,  if  a  vernacular  speech  was  not  to  be 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  37 

allowed  in  the  worship  of  the  Church,  recourse 
was  not  had  to  the  Hebrew  or  the  Greek. 
The  one  was  the  language  of  the  temple  and 
the  synagogue  in  which  our  Lord  worshipped ; 
the  other  the  language  in  a  dialect  of  which 
he  spoke,  and  in  which  his  Apostles  wrote. 
Both  these  languages  had  become  sacred  to  the 
Christian  by  their  association  with  the  revelation 
recorded  in  the  Holy  Scriptures.  But  the  use 
of  Latin  points  with  unmistakable  precision  to 
the  primitive  practice  of  conducting  worship 
even  in  Rome  in  a  "  language  understanded  by 
the  people."  The  Church  in  Rome,  which  St. 
Paul  in  his  Epistle  addressed  in  Greek,  became, 
as  it  grew,  an  integral  portion  of  the  Latin 
nation,  which  naturally  used  in  its  public  de- 
votions the  language  employed  in  secular  life. 
Not  even  the  nearness  of  the  times  of  the 
Apostles  nor  the  possession  of  Greek  Gospels 
and  Epistles  brought  with  it  an  obligation  to 
pray  in  a  foreign  or  unknown  tongue.  For 
English  speaking  people  to  conduct  divine 
service  in  the  English  language  is  thus  a  true 
following  of  the  Apostles,  is  in  fine  the  exact 
apostolic  usage.  Just  as  the  true  reproduc- 


THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 


tion  of  an  Englishman  is  not  he  who  imitates 
him,  for  an  Englishman  imitates  no  one,  but 
he  who  like  him  stands  by  his  own  traditions 
and  is  self-poised,  so  the  true  following  of 
any  example  is  always  a  following  in  the 
spirit.  A  slavish  adherence  to  the  letter 
often  cramps  or  even  kills  the  life  which  the 
letter  once  embodied  and  expressed.  Ec- 
clesiastical tradition  however  does  not  always 
follow  the  life  giving  principle  of  the  Apos- 
tle, "  Let  all  things  be  done  unto  edifying." 
Rome's  ecclesiastical  dominion  grew,  and  it 
imposed  its  accustomed  language  on  all  over 
whom  it  came  to  rule.  It  was  a  sign  of  domin- 
ion on  the  one  hand,  and  arguments  of  senti- 
ment or  utility  supported  it  on  the  other. 
Latin  was  associated  with  the  language  of  St. 
Peter,  on  whose  chair  the  Pope  assumed  to  sit, 
though  of  course  St.  Peter's  familiarity  with 
Latin  is  at  least  problematical,  while  his  knowl- 
edge of  Palestinian  Greek  is  beyond  question. 
And,  besides  sentiment,  came  in  the  argument 
of  utility.  It  was  urged  as  a  bond  of  Catholic 
union  that  all  Christian  worshippers  should 
worship  in  the  same  exact  words.  It  was 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


39 


argued  that  the  translation  of  sacred  expres- 
sions and  dogmas  into  many  tongues  might 
gradually  change  their  sense  and  bring  in 
heresies,  an  argument  far  more  applicable  to 
the  preservation  of  creeds  and  dogmas  in  origi- 
nal manuscripts  than  to  the  prayers  and  praises 
of  a  popular  assemblage  of  worshippers.  And 
thus  Latin  maintained  its  monopoly  of  the  lan- 
guage of  the  sanctuary,  when  it  had  ceased 
to  be  a  living  language,  when  none  spoke  it 
save  scholars  and  statesmen,  who  added  it  as 
an  accomplishment  to  the  use  of  their  native 
tongue. 

The  striking  fact,  then,  that  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer  discarded  the  language  of 
the  existing  missals  and  breviaries  is  very  sig- 
nificant of  its  conception  of  the  Christian  life 
it  would  nurture  and  strengthen.  That  life  was 
to  be  intelligent,  and  its  devotion  was  not  to 
root  itself  in  superstition,  but  in  knowledge. 
The  use  of  English  was  a  silent  but  strong 
assertion  of  the  value  of  the  worship  of  the 
mind.  The  Supreme  Master  had  commanded 
men  to  love  God  with  the  mind,  as  well  as  with 
the  heart  and  soul.  That  love,  coming  unto  God 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


in  worship,  must  know  that  he  is  and  what  he 
is, "  that  he  is  the  rewarder  of  such  as  diligently 
seek  him."  Man  must  worship  God  in  truth  as 
well  as  in  spirit.  He  cannot  acceptably  use 
worship  as  an  incantation  or  magic  rite.  His 
praying  is  not  simply  saying  prayers.  Worship 
is  the  expression  of  genuine  desire,  and  to  be 
acceptable  must  be  the  genuine  language  of 
the  heart,  not  a  mere  formula.  Our  fathers,  in 
accordance  with  this,  said  it  must  be  under- 
stood. According  to  their  conception,  worship 
was  not  simply  awe  before  an  inscrutable  power 
whom  men  should  seek  to  placate  by  the  flat- 
tery of  importunate  appeal.  It  was  not  the 
worship  of  an  unknown  God,  to  whom  we  ad- 
dress ourselves  in  an  act  of  homage  whose  force 
and  bearing  we  may  not  compute.  The  wor- 
ship of  God  through  Jesus  Christ  was  to  them 
a  reasonable  service.  It  is  not,  indeed,  an  act 
which  plumes  itself  on  the  understanding  of 
all  mysteries,  nor  which  pretends  to  fathom 
the  depths  of  the  Divine  Being.  It  is  not  an 
assumption  that  all  God's  ways  are  known  and 
plain  to  us,  but  it  is  founded  on  knowledge  so 
far  as  that  goes.  It  addresses  itself  to  attributes 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


in  God's  nature  which  it  is  assured  do  exist, 
and  which  the  infinite  content  and  range  of 
the  Divine  nature  beyond  our  knowledge  do  not 
contradict  but  immeasurably  strengthen.  The 
pattern  of  prayer  set  by  the  Master  of  all 
souls,  while  it  comprehends  all  human  wants, 
is  marked  by  the  directness  and  simplicity  of 
a  child.  It  asks,  not  wrestles,  nor  argues,  nor 
cajoles,  that  it  may  receive.  It  does  not  batter 
down  the  door,  but  knocks  at  it.  And  it  ad- 
dresses the  Divine  from  the  basis  of  the  human, 
in  the  quiet  assumption  of  their  coincidence. 
"Forgive  as  we  forgive,"  it  says,  attributing 
the  same  disposition  to  the  Heavenly  as  to  the 
earthly  Father,  without  presuming  to  limit  His 
boundless  mercy  to  man's  imperfect  and  par- 
tial exercise  of  it. 

In  Christ,  the  Christian  finds  that  the  same 
quality  which  he  shares  with  his  fellow  men 
is  as  really,  while  far  more  fully,  resident  in 
God ;  and  it  is  on  the  basis  of  this  known 
clemency  of  disposition  that  man  rests  his  pe- 
tition for  forgiveness.  As  the  prayer  which 
the  Lord  Jesus  set  to  be  a  pattern  of  devotion, 
as  an  example  both  of  acceptable  brevity  and  of 


42  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

the  rational  expression  of  known  and  recognized 
wants,  as  this  simplest  and  grandest  of  forms 
is  accompanied  by  a  depreciation  and  denun- 
ciation of  vain  repetition  and  much  speaking, 
it  is  quite  evident  that  once  praying  it  "  with 
the  spirit  and  the  understanding  also  "  is  more 
pleasing  to  the  Divine  mind  and  more  effica- 
cious with  the  Divine  will  than  the  rattling 
discharge  of  a  decade  of  Pater  Nosters.  In 
fine,  the  printing  of  the  Prayer  Book  in  the 
English  tongue,  to  secure  the  intelligent  and 
sincere  devotion  of  the  English  worshipper,  is 
in  strict  accord  with  the  tone  and  temper  of  all 
that  the  New  Testament  has  to  say  concerning 
the  worship  of  God. 

Thus  in  its  conduct  of  common  prayer  the 
Prayer  Book,  like  the  Gospel,  gives  most  sig- 
nificant suggestion  of  its  ideal  of  the  common 
Christian  life.  By  its  plea  for  intelligence,  it 
seeks  to  bring  the  life  out  of  the  shadows  of 
ignorance  and  credulity  into  the  full  sunlight 
of  knowledge  and  conviction.  It  proclaims  the 
marriage  and  forbids  the  divorce  of  faith, 
through  which  man  appeals  to  God,  and  reason, 
through  which  God  appeals  to  man.  It  incites 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


43 


to  study  and  investigation  because  God's 
thought  is  thus  disclosed  to  man's  thought. 
It  claims  the  earth  whereon  our  life  is  led  as 
the  "Lord's  with  the  fulness  thereof,"  and 
regards  even  the  physical  instruments,  as  the 
telescope  and  microscope,  which  search  into  its 
wonders  and  reveal  the  Divine  thought  held  in 
its  bosom,  as  instruments  fashioned  for  a  sacred 
use,  even  the  use  of  deciphering  God's  record 
of  himself  in  the  work  of  his  hands.  Such  an 
intelligent  faith  is  not  afraid  lest  it  peradven- 
ture  be  wrecked  by  the  storms  of  controversy, 
for  its  Christ  walks  serenely  on  all  these  waters. 
The  calm  and  assured  faith  in  God,  which 
underlies  the  very  form  of  the  Prayer  Book's 
devotion  as  a  reasonable  service,  renders  futile 
all  fear  of  banishing  God  from  his  universe  by 
discovery  or  from  his  Bible  by  criticism.  That 
terror  is  but  a  relic  of  the  superstition  which 
feared  so  much  because  it  knew  so  little.  The 
unexpressed  but  conscious  postulate  of  the 
"  Common  Prayer  writ  in  the  native  tongue  "  is 
that,  as  knowledge  grows  from  more  to  more, 
more  of  that  reverence,  whose  voice  is  wor- 
ship, will  dwell  within  the  soul.  The  rational 


44 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


faith  in  which  it  is  conceived  fosters  no  dual- 
istic  scheme  of  nature  without,  or  of  the  mind 
within.  It  lends  no  ear  to  the  Manichean 
protest  against  matter,  nor  to  the  obscurantist 
protest  against  reason.  It  consequently  feels 
no  distrust  of  discoveries  in  the  realm  of  na- 
ture, and  would  stimulate  rather  than  discour- 
age that  wide  survey  and  keen  discrimination 
which  in  our  day  has  created  the  world  anew. 
The  faith  which  the  Prayer  Book  invokes 
and  inculcates  is  one  which  could  stand 
unshaken  amid  the  earthquake  shock  of  the 
Copernican  system,  that  mightiest  of  natu- 
ral revolutions.  That  scientific  revolution  in 
thought  displaced  our  planet  from  the  centre 
and  transported  it  to  the  circumference  of  the 
solar  system,  and  stigmatized  as  a  speck  of 
star  dust  what  had  been  regarded  as  the  cen- 
tral mass.  It  sent  the  earth  spinning  through 
space  as  the  satellite  of  a  system  itself  a  satel- 
lite, though  it  had  once  seemed  to  be  the  im- 
movable pivot  of  all  celestial  movement.  So 
remote  and  insignificant  a  planet  as  the  world 
was  now  declared  to  be,  seemed  to  some  to 
dwarf  the  importance  of  the  race  which  dwelt 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  45 

upon  it,  and  to  render  the  assertion  of  God's 
dwelling  among  that  race  in  the  Incarnation 
of  his  Son  an  incredible  audacity  of  religious 
arrogance.  But  faith  allied  to  reason  rested 
secure  in  the  assurance  that  the  infinite  power 
which  the  new  knowledge  unfolded  rendered  it 
yet  closer  akin  to  the  infinite  love  disclosed  to 
faith  in  the  Gospel.  This  divine  visitation  of 
the  least  of  the  stellar  tribes  seemed  to  com- 
port yet  more  fully  with  the  Master's  word, 
about  the  search,  by  the  head  of  the  house- 
hold, for  the  least  lost  coin  of  the  treasury 
and  the  feeblest  sheep  of  the  fold.  The  stead- 
fast faith  in  the  unseen  rested  all  the  more 
secure  in  the  conviction,  that  that  revelation 
has  not  the  least  evidence  for  its  verity  which, 
though  it  humble  man,  exalts  God. 

Thus  it  is  that  the  increasing  knowledge  of 
nature  has  its  confirmation  for  the  faith  which 
penetrates  beyond  nature,  and  finds  in  it  its 
ally,  not  its  enemy. 

Hence  it  comes  that  the  normal  religious 
life  is  one  which  is  alert  in  intellect.  If  true 
to  its  Master  it  must  recognize  as  his  call  that 
impulse  within  us  which  aims  at  the  highest 
knowledge  of  nature  and  incites  to  the  fullest 


4 6  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

discovery  of  the  secrets  locked  in  her  bosom. 
It  rejoices  to  believe  that  man  touches  the 
outer  garment  of  the  invisible  spirit  in  the 
world  of  matter,  from  which  touch  there  flows 
forth  much  healing  of  the  mind.  The  careful 
scrutiny  of  Lyell  among  the  rocks,  the  pro- 
found contemplation  of  the  law  of  living  things 
by  Wallace  and  Darwin,  the  craving  impulse 
of  Nansen  to  penetrate  the  unknown  within 
the  icy  regions  of  the  pole,  these  to  an  intelli- 
gent faith  are  not  irreligious  longings,  their 
curiosity  is  not  impious,  their  pursuit  is  not  de- 
moralization. These  enter  in  their  research  a 
high  and  noble  realm  where  the  Master  accom- 
panies, even  as  when  he  walked  with  the  dis- 
ciples through  the  Galilean  fields  and  bade 
them  consider  the  lilies  how  they  grow,  and 
mark  the  whirling  flight  of  the  birds  in  the 
sky,  and  know  that  the  Father's  thought  and 
care  were  among  them.  Yes,  Christ  conse- 
crates the  intellect,  and  that  consecration  is 
not  a  lullaby,  but  an  awakening.  The  stimu- 
lus to  research  and  investigation,  to  discovery 
and  contemplation,  stirs  in  the  voice  which 
calls  us  to  live  on  God's  footstool  as  the  Sons 
of  God. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


47 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   CHRISTIAN   LIFE   AS   RATIONAL 

A  N  intelligent  Christian  faith  is  intelli- 
•^*-  gent  in  regard  to  the  inner  as  well  as 
the  outer  life  of  man.  While  it  has  no  dread 
of  nature  or  the  science  of  it,  it  cherishes  as 
well  no  obscurantist  fear  of  the  inner  world  of 
reason.  It  does  not  turn  off  from  the  realm 
of  mind  as  from  a  region  of  false  lights  and 
delusive  mirage,  but  rejoices  to  trust  it  as  en- 
kindled by  the  Divine  Word  "which  lighteth 
every  man  coming  into  the  world."  To  this 
inner  conscience  and  consciousness  it  perceives, 
the  Divine  Word  himself  continually  appealed. 
But  while  trusting  this  verifying  faculty,  as 
his  Master  trusted  it,  the  wise  householder, 
instructed  unto  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  recog- 
nizes the  necessity  to  keep  the  inward  eye  clear 
lest  the  light  in  it  become  darkness.  It  does 
not  therefore  disregard  the  voice  of  the  uni« 


48  THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 

versal  Christian  reason,  the  conviction  or  the 
confession  of  the  Church  Catholic,  or  resist  as 
irreconcilable  with  the  voice  within  the  claim 
of  authority  without  which  comes  attesting  the 
record  of  the  ecumenical  consciousness.  But 
while  it  gives  friendly  reception  to  the  utter- 
ance which  claims  the  authority  of  the  past,  it 
tests  it,  that  it  may  the  better  discover  its  mean- 
ing or  detect  its  limitation,  or  mark  how  it 
holds  in  the  germ  that  which  now  has  come  to 
fuller  apprehension  in  the  ripened  experience 
of  the  race  through  the  Divine  leading. 

For  a  reasonable  faith  holds  that  the  Divine 
Word  which  has  been  ever  speaking  is  speaking 
still,  and  that  any  ecumenical  utterance  finds 
its  authority  in  the  consenting  conviction  of  the 
many  voices  which  find  expression  in  it.  Thus 
to  it  the  supreme  witness  to  the  truth  is  not 
simply  truth  as  other  men  of  other  times  have 
conceived  it  or  uttered  it,  but  that  accord  of 
the  two  voices  of  the  past  and  of  the  present 
which  discloses  an  undertone  of  concordant 
meaning  in  both,  though  the  single  note  of  the 
remoter  time  may  have  been  modified  in  its 
emphasis  or  developed  in  its  force  as  it  is 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


49 


expressed  in  the  fuller  and  more  vibrant  chord 
of  to-day's  utterance.  To  it  legitimate  theo- 
logical thought  does  not  assume  the  form  of  a 
mere  archaeological  pursuit.  It  is  not  a  study 
of  fossils  witnessing  to  an  earlier  life  which 
has  no  vital  connection  with  or  development  in 
the  thought  of  to-day,  and  which  we  can  only 
lament  as  extinct,  and  hopelessly  strive  to  force 
ourselves  back  into  it  again.  It  rather  holds 
Christian  thought  to  be  as  legitimate  to-day  as 
yesterday,  not  as  being  cut  off  from  yesterday, 
but  as  being  an  evolution  out  of  previous  life 
into  nobler  and  more  impressive  or  expressive 
forms. 

And  it  learns  this  lesson  from  the  progres- 
sion of  the  race  in  faith  and  morals  deline- 
ated in  the  Holy  Scriptures,  wherein  the  day 
spring  from  on  high  hath  visited  us  as  a  shin- 
ing light  which  shineth  brighter  and  brighter 
unto  the  perfect  day.  This  Scriptural  witness 
to  a  gradual  revelation  has  its  impressive  and 
authoritative  lesson  for  the  development  of 
Christian  truth,  which  is  a  continuous  growth 
into  the  knowledge  of  Christ.  The  analogy  of 
the  old  growth  to  the  new  is  complete,  and  has 
4 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


the  assurance  of  being  God's  method,  which 
changes  not.  As  the  law  of  Moses  expanded  in 
significance  and  fulness  through  the  spiritual  in- 
sight of  the  prophets  applying  and  elucidating 
it  in  relation  to  the  problems  of  their  times,  so 
the  comprehension  of  Christian  truth  is  des- 
tined to  grow  from  more  to  more  "until  we  all 
come  in  the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God  to  the 
measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ." 
He  of  whose  fulness  we  have  all  received  rele- 
gated (as  illustrated  in  the  vision  of  transfigu- 
ration on  the  mount)  Moses  the  lawgiver  and 
Elijah  the  prophet,  supreme  in  their  day,  to  the 
realm  of  the  subordinate  and  relative ;  a  posi- 
tion their  contemporary  followers  could  not 
have  conceived  possible.  Those  also  who  own 
His  supreme  lordship  and  mastership  are  and 
must  ever  be  striving  to  comprehend  the  height 
and  depth  and  length  and  breadth  of  that  which 
passeth  knowledge,  and  to  come  into  that 
larger  and  fuller  possession  of  his  mind  which 
relatively  dwarfs  the  conceptions  even  of  the 
greatest  men  who  have  gone  before  us. 

The  growth  of  Christian  knowledge  is  not  a 
growth  beyond   Christ  or  apart  from  him,  but 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


into  him.  Christ  being  what  he  is,  that  growth 
cannot  be  other  than  limitless.  As  in  him 
dwelt  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily,  it 
follows  that  in  the  highest  reach  of  intellect 
and  expression  man  is  to  count  not  himself  to 
have  apprehended,  but  to  follow  after  if  that  he 
may  apprehend.  He  is  to  hear  the  cheer  of 
the  Master's  voice  ever  saying,  "Ye  shall  see 
greater  things  than  these."  He  is  stimulated 
to  deeper  search  for  the  unsearchable  riches  of 
that  Master's  mind  and  meaning  by  the  prom- 
ised guidance  by  his  Spirit  into  all  truth.  But 
he  cannot  regard  as  all  truth  the  fragments 
other  men  or  ages  have  gained,  however  valu- 
able and  important,  for  it  is  the  all-truth,  not 
of  the  limited  and  imperfect  minds  who  have 
sought,  but  of  the  All-perfect  and  the  All-fair 
whom  they  sought.  We  see  in  our  own  age  men 
rejoicing  in  the  truth  which  an  age  previous 
could  not  discover  since  it  could  not  bear, 
and  find  that  increasing  knowledge  brings  also 
increasing  capacity  to  know;  that  its  advance 
is  from  strength  to  strength,  and  from  glory  to 
glory.  The  progress  of  moral  perception  is  too 
patent  to  be  denied.  The  attitude  of  the  whole 


S2 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


Christian  world  towards  slavery,  for  instance, 
is  other  and  far  higher  than  it  was  for  ages 
in  the  Christian  Church.  The  vast  provision 
and  care  for  the  sick  in  hospitals,  for  the  weak- 
minded,  as  for  the  insane,  for  the  reformation 
of  criminals  and  the  sanitary  and  decent  hous- 
ing of  the  poor;  this  whole  humanitarian  de- 
velopment which  so  strongly  marks  our  century 
is  not  only  a  progress  and  advance  in  practical 
Christianity,  but  is  a  direct  outcome  of  an 
enlarged  and  deeper  vision  of  the  humanity  of 
Christ  and  of  its  meaning  for  the  world. 
"  Ecce  homo ! "  is  the  cry  which  has  led  the 
Christian  world  into  nobler  practice  than  it 
ever  attained  in  any  earlier  age.  The  old 
controversies  and  decrees  concerning  the  meta- 
physical relations  of  the  Divine  and  human  in 
Christ,  which  found  expression  through  the 
earlier  Councils,  these  had  their  value  for  a 
speculative  age  and  form  to-day  an  intellectual 
basis  for  the  more  practical  thought  of  our  time. 
The  realization  and  amplification  of  that  truth, 
however,  as  it  has  sunk  into  the  life  and  con- 
sciousness of  men  has  deeply  stirred  and  modi- 
fied the  life  and  manners  of  our  age.  It  has 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


53 


turned  the  assertion  of  the  Divine  right  of 
kings  into  the  demand  for  the  Divine  rights  of 
the  people.  That  wonderful  change  in  the  con- 
ception of  government  which  has  swept  over 
all  Western  Europe  in  our  century,  which  holds 
no  longer  that  the  nation  is  for  the  ruler,  but, 
whether  under  the  republican  or  monarchical 
form,  that  the  government  is  for  the  nation, 
this  assertion  of  the  democratic  principle  has 
come  of  profound  conviction  of  the  value  and 
capacity  of  man  as  evoked  by  a  larger  and 
nobler  conception  of  the  Incarnation  of  the  Son 
of  God,  who  is  the  Son  of  Man. 

It  is  plain  to  see  that  there  are  yet  waiting 
large  departments  of  Christian  truth  which 
promise  rich  fruitage  for  Christian  knowledge 
and  Christian  life  when  once  developed  by  the 
enlarged  Christian  experience  of  that  ancient 
Church,  which  is  the  church  of  to-day  and  not 
the  infant  Church  of  the  earlier  centuries.  One 
such  sphere  is  the  doctrine  of  God  the  Holy 
Ghost,  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  Life,  a  depart- 
ment of  Christian  doctrine  which  has  hereto- 
fore had  but  scant  notice  from  theologians  even 
though  under  the  dispensation  of  the  Holy 


54 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


Ghost  the  life  of  the  world  to-day  is  specially 
ordered  of  God.  The  visible  presence  of  the 
Divine  Son  of  Man  is  withdrawn,  that  the  reign 
of  his  Spirit  may  begin  and  extend  in  power, 
that  greater  works  may  be  done  by  Christ, 
through  the  Spirit,  "according  to  the  power 
which  worketh  in  us,"  than  were  possible 
while  the  limitations  of  his  mortal  nature  lay 
about  him.  How  vast  that  range  of  knowledge 
opened  by  the  Spirit  which  searcheth  the  deep 
things  of  God!  which  stretches  on  until  the 
earthly  and  the  heavenly  seem  to  melt  into 
one  horizon  and  join  together  the  earth  and 
the  sky,  man's  dwelling  place  and  the  source 
of  spiritual  light  and  life.  What  radiance  may 
we  not  expect  the  developed  doctrine  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  to  throw  on  both  the  Church  and 
the  world,  on  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth, 
its  services,  its  sermons,  and  its  sacraments, 
and  on  the  life  of  the  Spirit  in  the  truth,  as  it 
touches  the  vast  and  complex  problems  of  our 
human  intercourse  and  human  destiny. 

Some  may  naturally  ask,  What,  amid  all 
this  expectant  development  of  Christian  truth, 
becomes  of  the  faith  once,  or  once  for  all,  de- 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


55 


livered  to  the  saints  ?  Yet  one  might  as  well 
ask  of  Science,  what,  amid  all  your  fresh  en- 
lightenment, your  law  of  gravitation  (unknown 
to  the  fathers),  and  your  heliocentric  solar  sys- 
tem, destructive  of  ancient  postulates  and  forms 
of  speech,  your  new  chemistry  and  biology  and 
geology;  what  amid  all  these  becomes  of  the 
universe  made  once  for  all  and  as  we  formerly 
fancied  in  six  terrestrial  days?  And  the  an- 
swer is  the  same  in  both  cases.  The  cosmos 
was  evoked  from  chaos  once  for  all,  and  in  it 
existed  all  that  now  exists,  either  as  present 
reality  or  prospective  certainty.  No  new  law 
has  been  interposed  and  if  new  forms  appear 
they  were  germinant  there  from  the  beginning. 
Science  has  not  added  a  jot  or  tittle  to  the 
universe,  but  only  something  to  the  knowledge 
of  it.  It  has  simply  educed  and  explained  its 
ancient  treasures.  It  brings  in  a  new  creation 
only  in  the  sense  of  elucidating  the  old  crea- 
tion. Gravitation  reigned  before  Newton,  and 
evolution  was  going  on  amid  the  star  dust  aeons 
before  Darwin  studied  his  pigeons.  Coperni- 
cus did  not  disturb  the  sweet  influences  of  the 
Pleiades  recognized  in  Job's  day;  he  merely  ex- 


THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 


panded  the  single  note  of  one  constellation  into 
the  larger  chorus  of  the  illimitable  heavens. 
And  yet,  though  the  law  and  the  fact  were  there 
of  old,  who  does  not  own  the  mighty  power  for 
good,  through  this  great  unfolding  of  them,  in 
the  elevation  of  man's  thought,  in  the  expan- 
sion of  his  spirit,  in  his  awe  of  the  mighty  fab- 
ric in  which  he  dwells,  in  his  reverence  for  the 
order  and  truth  and  wisdom  and  beauty  in- 
herent in  the  Eternal  Mind  from  which  it  all 
proceeds  ? 

So  it  is  of  the  faith  once  delivered.  It  is  all 
contained,  every  atom,  in  Him,  who  is  the 
sacred  object  of  it.  But  as  has  been  so  well 
said  by  Professor  Du  Bose: 

"  If  Jesus  Christ  is  what  the  Church  believes 
Him  to  be,  He  is  and  always  will  be  very  much 
more  in  Himself  than  our  science  of  Him. 
Christology  will,  therefore,  never  be  complete; 
but  it  is  quite  enough  to  convince  us  that  there 
is  a  truth  in  it  of  which,  while  it  is  greater 
than  our  knowledge,  we  may  yet  know  more 
and  more.  No  human  mind  can  grasp  the 
unity  or  organic  whole  of  nature,  yet  science 
knows  that  nature  is  such  a  whole,  and  that  it 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


57 


can  forever  approximate  to  it.  So  the  Church 
knows  that  Jesus  Christ  stands  to  us  for  a  fact 
of  God  in  nature  and  in  humanity,  of  which  it 
may  know  the  truth,  although  it  can  forever 
only  approximate  to  the  whole  truth." 

Was  there  no  gain  for  Christendom  when 
St.  John  and  St.  James  disclosed  and  developed 
the  one  its  subjective  principle  and  the  other 
its  objective  law;  no  gain  when  St.  Paul,  by 
the  force  of  his  great  genius,  fit  vehicle  for  so 
divine  an  inspiration,  transformed  the  concep- 
tion of  Christ's  Kingdom  from  that  of  an 
advanced  Jewish  sect  into  that  of  a  Catholic 
Church;  no  gain  when  the  great  representa- 
tive of  a  Christianized  circumcision  in  his 
Epistle  established  as  its  rule  the  universal 
moral  law  instead  of  the  ancient  prescriptive 
ritual  ? 

Did  the  Fathers  at  Nicaea  add  nothing  to 
the  stability  of  Christian  progress,  when  they 
evolved,  out  of  the  facts  long  known  and  lived 
by,  that  stately  confession  hymn,  the  Nicene 
Creed?  Think  as  a  sober  Christian  of  the 
confusion  and  perversion  which  would  doubt- 
less have  come  into  Christendom  had  not  their 


58  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

voice  attuned  itself  in  a  new  but  accordant 
strain  to  the  voice  of  the  Gospel,  not  adding 
thereto  but  evoking  therefrom  the  true  key 
note  of  all  the  after  progression.  Has  there 
come  no  gain  to  Christian  thought  and  Chris- 
tian life,  no  invigoration  of  its  mental  and 
moral  atmosphere,  from  that  clearer  and  no- 
bler and  deeper  apprehension  of  the  Atonement, 
which  has  been  evolved  through  long  periods 
of  devout  study?  Whatever  may  be  deter- 
mined by  any  as  to  the  particular  content  of 
the  doctrine,  now,  at  least,  the  aspect  of  the 
fact  is  changed  from  that  of  an  ingenious  and 
exceptional  plan  to  meet  a  special  exigency 
of  the  race  into  the  revelation  of  an  eternal 
element  of  God's  nature,  an  element  which 
manifests  itself  in  all  his  rule  of  moral  and 
spiritual  beings,  the  deep  and  sacred  element 
revealed  in  that  law  of  sacrifice  from  which  he 
does  not  hold  himself  exempt.  Thus  construed 
the  Atonement  makes  Christ  hanging  on  the 
cross,  as  well  as  standing  before  the  empty 
tomb,  the  very  revelation  of  God,  in  the  deep 
things  of  whose  being,  the  Christ  is  seen  as 
the  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


59 


world.  To  remove  this  great  doctrinal  fact 
from  the  realm  of  the  abnormal,  the  transient, 
and  the  temporal  into  the  realm  of  the  unseen 
and  the  eternal  is  a  gain  for  the  intellect,  for 
the  conscience,  and  for  the  heart  of  man.  The 
Atonement  may  well  evoke  a  more  vital  and 
heartfelt  response  to  its  appeal  when  it  is  held, 
not  as  a  perplexing  enigma  of  celestial  phil- 
osophy which  bewilders  and  baffles  us,  but  as 
the  fulfilment  in  perfect  completeness  of  the 
law  which  God  out  of  his  own  nature  has  in- 
laid in  our  constitution ;  which  is  regnant  in 
all  noble  life  as  it  reflects  God's  life  and  is 
sacred  to  all  deep  affection  which  echoes  his 
love;  which  making  Christ  really  ours,  makes 
God  really  ours,  in  that  as  we  are  Christ's,  so 
Christ  is  God's. 

We  may  fitly  close  this  chapter  by  a  passage 
from  the  writings  of  Dr.  Philip  Schaff. 

"It  is  proper  then  to  speak  of  progress  in 
the  Church  itself.  But  this  progress  is  never 
in  the  true  sense  creative,  but  comes  only  in 
the  way  of  reception,  organic  assimilation,  and 
expansion.  All  historical  development  in  the 
Church  consists  in  a  cumulative  apprehension 


60  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

of  the  life  and  doctrine  of  Christ  and  of  his 
Apostles,  and  a  progressive  and  ever  increasing 
appropriation  and  manifestation  of  their  spirit 
and  method." 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  6l 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AS  SALVATION 

TF  progress  in  the  apprehension  of  the  truth 
•••  is  so  essential,  what  becomes,  it  may  be 
asked,  of  the  truth  essential  to  salvation  if  it 
needs  must  be  a  growing  and  expanding  truth. 
Christ  came  to  save  men,  and  was  there  not 
enough  truth  to  save  men  in  the  beginning,  and 
if  so  what  is  the  use  of  more  ?  The  answer  is 
patent.  Salvation  is  accord  with  God,  and  to 
come  into  accord  with  God  is  not  simply  to 
know,  but  to  assimilate  and  come  into  harmony 
with  what  we  know.  The  instrument  of  sal- 
vation is  faith,  the  faith  which  is  not  chiefly 
intellectual  assent  but  moral  surrender,  the 
committing  of  one's  soul  and  life  to  the  truth 
of  God,  the  knowledge  of  which  it  possesses. 
Thus  to  believe  Christ  as  he  is  revealed  to  us 
by  coming  unto  him  for  rest,  and  taking  his 
yoke  upon  us  to  guide  our  labor  into  rest,  i.  e. 


62  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

by  moral  and  spiritual  surrender,  this  is  for 
every  soul  salvation.  But  as  we  know  more  and 
learn  more  of  Him,  fuller  surrender  still  is  pos- 
sible and  also  imperative  for  that  accord  with 
God,  which  is  salvation.  So  St.  Paul  evidently 
felt  when  he  spoke  of  leaving  the  things  which 
are  behind  and  pressing  forward  towards  the 
mark  for  the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God  in 
Christ  Jesus.  He  had  had  a  knowledge  of 
Christ  very  real,  very  consolatory,  very  stimu- 
lating ;  but  he  came  in  the  course  of  his  growth 
into  the  knowledge  of  Christ  to  feel  that  his 
previous  knowledge  had  been  a  knowing  of 
Christ  after  the  flesh,  from  outside,  as  it  were. 
But  much  as  that  knowledge  had  done  for  him, 
it  could  not  satisfy  him  longer.  Now  hence- 
forth know  we  him  no  more  after  the  flesh,  he 
exclaimed,  but  in  the  fuller  truth  of  experience, 
and  thought,  and  service,  which  had  revealed 
him  yet  more  completely ;  in  the  enlarged  appre- 
hension of  his  fulness  which  was  ever  growing, 
so  that  now  his  salvation  was  nearer  and  greater 
than  when  he  first  believed. 

The  completeness  of  man's  salvation  demands 
the  intelligent   reception  of  the  truth,  and  a 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


growth  into  the  intelligent  reception  of  it.  All 
Christ's  similes  of  the  Christian  life  are  similes 
of  growth,  of  the  growth  of  the  building  to  com- 
pletion, of  the  body  to  perfect  harmony  and 
health,  of  the  leaven  which  spreads  through  all 
the  lump,  of  the  seed  which  expands  into  the 
wide  branching  tree,  or  from  a  handful  multi- 
plies into  the  harvest.  But  there  are  those 
who  speak  of  the  deposit  of  the  faith  as  of  the 
deposit  of  a  certain  sum  in  a  bank,  to  be  kept 
intact  in  some  ancient  napkin  and  not  put  out 
to  increase.  They  talk  of  the  truth  that  is  to 
be  believed,  as  though  it  were  a  certain  definite 
amount  of  statement  which  could  be  weighed  in 
the  intellectual  balance  of  one  age,  or  meas- 
ured by  the  definite  doctrinal  standard  of  one 
special  time.  The  various  Confessions  so  called 
of  the  various  churches  of  the  Reformation  and 
the  Decrees  of  the  Council  of  Trent  as  a  reply 
to  them,  are  so  many  attempts  thus  to  define 
and  measure  truth  for  their  time,  doubtless 
their  authors  thought  for  all  time.  But  the 
places  that  knew  them  know  them  no  more. 
How  are  these  carefully  elaborated  statements 
outgrown,  so  that  they  must  be  explained  even 


64  THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 

to  explaining  them  away  in  order  to  hold  on 
to  them,  and  what  sane  man  or  church  would 
essay  such  a  task  to-day?  How  different  are 
these  exclusive  and  excluding  statements,  seek- 
ing to  limit  the  action  of  our  Christian  intel- 
lect within  the  bounds  of  a  special  confession, 
from  those  wonderful  inclusive  statements  we 
call  the  Catholic  Creeds,  not  into  which  we 
look,  but  through  which  we  look  up  to  God; 
which  give  us  the  great  data  of  revelation,  and 
leave  the  fulness  of  the  apprehension  of  them 
to  that  growth  in  the  mind  of  the  Spirit  which 
comes  of  experience  according  to  the  measure  of 
the  gift  of  Christ.  Well  may  the  Christian  lips 
sing  Sursum  Corda  as  the  Christian  mind  rec- 
ognizes in  Christ  the  light  of  the  world,  shin- 
ing into  every  realm  of  his  creation,  that  his 
disciples  may  follow  him  there  as  children  of 
the  light  and  of  the  day. 

In  thus  recognizing  the  note  of  intelligence 
in  the  normal  Christian  life,  evoked  by  the 
sound  of  the  English  tongue  as  the  order  of 
the  Common  Prayer  begins,  we  but  anticipate 
the  lesson  indicated  in  every  service  which  the 
book  contains.  Let  us  but  glance  at  the  con- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  65 

tents  of  this  book,  and  at  once  we  are  struck 
with  the  presence  of  exhortation  and  explana- 
tion in  all  its  services.  The  daily  Morning 
and  Evening  Prayer,  after  the  scriptural  call  to 
God's  presence,  begin  with  the  exhortation  to 
the  people  setting  forth  the  nature  of  the  wor- 
ship in  which  they  are  to  engage.  However 
tedious  and  cumbersome  this  daily  iteration  of 
what  has  been  stigmatized  as  the  little  preach- 
ment may  have  come  to  be  during  the  centu- 
ries in  which  intelligence  has  spread,  and  the 
leaven  of  the  Prayer  Book  has  raised  the  whole 
tone  of  reasonable  worship  in  the  Church,  and 
however  wise  the  action  of  our  revisers  in 
making  the  use  of  it  optional,  save  on  Sunday 
morning,  still  its  presence  in  the  early  age  of 
the  Reformation  was  a  distinctive  feature  wit- 
nessing both  to  the  necessity  of  enlightening 
the  mass  of  the  people,  whose  worship  in  an 
unknown  tongue  had  taken  on  largely  the  char- 
acter of  an  incantation,  and  to  its  conception  of 
true  worship  as  an  intelligent  act  of  intelligent 
beings.  Let  these  exhortations  stand,  though 
their  use  may  be  wisely  curtailed,  stand  as 
monuments  to  witness  to  the  Church's  im- 
5 


66  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

primatur  on  worship  as  a  reasonable  service, 
and  on  life  as  a  life  led  in  reason  as  in  faith. 

This  feature  of  explanatory  exhortation  at- 
tends, as  we  have  said,  all  the  specially  great 
services  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  Bap- 
tism, Confirmation,  the  Administration  of  the 
Holy  Communion,  all  share  this  feature  in 
common  with  the  order  for  Daily  morning 
and  evening  Prayer.  And  even  the  more 
individual  services,  such  as  that  of  Holy 
Matrimony,  and  the  private  services,  such 
as  the  visitation  of  the  sick,  and  of  prisoners, 
share  this  feature.  Everywhere  and  in  every 
place  worshippers  are  to  know  what  they  are 
about.  The  opus  operatum  theory  is  not  that  on 
which  these  offices  of  worship  are  constructed. 
The  subjective  as  well  as  the  objective  element 
must  be  present.  There  must  be  the  indi- 
vidual response  as  well  as  the  declared  truth, 
the  actual  reception  as  well  as  positive  dona- 
tion of  the  grace.  The  analogy  of  nature,  — 
since  nature  is  God's  ordinance  and  revela- 
tion in  matter,  —  serves  in  the  realm  of  the 
spirit.  As  there  is  no  sound  without  the 
ear's  auditory  nerve  receiving  and  conveying 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


6J 


the  vibrations  of  aerial  movement  to  the  brain ; 
as  sight  is  the  eye's  report  back  of  the  mes- 
sage of  the  sun's  rays;  as  in  fine  there  is  no 
sensation,  in  all  the  assault  of  nature  on  the 
senses,  until  the  senses  have  actively  responded 
to  the  assault,  so  in  the  realm  of  spirit,  the 
effect  of  truth  and  grace  is  conditioned  by 
the  reception  it  obtains.  Truth  and  grace  are 
indeed  not  created  by  man's  response  to  them; 
they  are  forever  the  objective  realities  of  God. 
Independent  of  man's  recognition,  they  abide 
from  everlasting  in  the  bosom  of  the  Eternal. 
But  their  power  over  life  and  character  is  con- 
ditioned by  the  soul's  response.  Holiness, 
purity,  righteousness,  worldliness,  uncleanness, 
injustice;  these  come  as  man  relates  himself  in 
harmony  or  in  opposition  to  the  objective  truth 
and  grace  of  God.  Jangle  all  the  bells  in 
Christendom,  and  there  is  no  sound  for  all  the 
tumultuous  leaping  of  the  air,  unless,  entering 
the  winding  labyrinth  of  the  single  ear,  the 
motion  comes  in  touch  with  the  living  action 
of  the  brain,  which  answers  to  it.  Proclaim  in 
sermon,  or  offer  in  sacrament  in  clearest  meas- 
ure the  living  law  of  the  Gospel,  and  without 


68  THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 

the  soul's  consent  it  leaves  the  soul  impover- 
ished still.  Thus  it  is  that  the  apprehension 
of  the  truth  and  the  recognition  of  God's  grace 
are  so  essential  to  vital  worship  and  to  the 
normal  Christian  life  which  it  seeks  to  sanctify 
as  God's  in  all  its  ways.  Eternal  life  is  God's 
gift,  participation  in  it  requires  man's  act  of 
recognition  and  response. 

Let  us  note,  however,  that  this  hortatory 
and  explanatory  feature  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  inserted  to  secure  an  intelligent  appre- 
hension of  its  worship,  is  not  an  attempt  to 
deny  or  dissipate  the  mystery  of  the  spiritual 
life,  or  of  the  Being  or  the  influence  of  the 
Eternal  Spirit.  It  presupposes  the  reasonable- 
ness of  prayer  when  it  indicates  its  proper 
form,  but  it  does  not  exploit  its  mystery. 
How  our  thoughts  in  worship  reach  the  Eternal 
Mind,  how  our  words  in  worship  enter  the 
Eternal  Ear,  and  how  the  answer  comes,  these 
things  must  be  left  for  the  day  when  "  we  shall 
know  even  as  we  are  known."  The  peace 
which  proceeds  of  worship  is  a  peace  which 
passeth  understanding.  Were  it  not  so  it 
would  be  unreal,  for  it  is  the  mystery  of  life 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


69 


reposing  in  the  mystery  of  godliness.  It  is 
the  unutterable  yearning  of  the  soul  which 
cannot  comprehend  itself  to  find  rest  and 
strength  and  life  in  one  who  comprehends  it, 
but  whom  it  cannot  comprehend.  It  is  the 
outcome  of 

"  .  .  .  .  those  obstinate  questionings 
Of  sense  and  outward  things, 
Fallings  from  us,  vanishings ; 
Blank  misgivings  of  a  Creature 
Moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized, 
High  instincts  before  which  our  mortal  Nature 
Doth  tremble  like  a  guilty  Thing  surprised  .  .  . 
Which  be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain  light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  a  master  light  of  all  our  seeing; 
Uphold  us,  cherish,  and  have  power  to  make 
Our  noisy  years  seem  moments  in  the  being 
Of  the  eternal  Silence." 

In  this  mystery  of  prayer,  and  of  salvation 
through  its  holy  communion,  "Deep  calleth 
unto  deep. "  It  were  a  shallow  thought  indeed 
to  think  to  explain  away  its  mystery.  But  it 
is  a  noble  thought  to  unfold  that  mystery  as 
the  reasonable  refuge  of  the  mystery  of  life  and 
being.  And  so  of  the  mysteries  of  the  sacra- 
ments which  body  forth  the  mystery  of  the 
soul's  birth  from  above,  and  of  its  nourishment 


7o 


THE   PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


by  the  very  life  and  being  of  its  Lord.  The 
law  of  the  soul's  response  finds  sovereignty 
here,  as  elsewhere  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit, 
a  response  not  creative  but  receptive  of  God's 
grace.  The  exhortation  stands  for  an  intelli- 
gent participation  in  the  act  that  there  may  be 
an  active  cooperation,  and  so  an  efficacy  of  that 
which  is  symbolized  in  the  washing  of  water 
and  the  partaking  of  the  bread  and  wine.  But 
who  may  explain  the  action?  He  only  who 
can  comprehend  the  soul,  in  its  origin,  its 
nature,  and  its  destiny.  Not  he  who  is  en- 
wrapped all  about  with  its  mystery,  who  feels 
the  need  of  heavenly  things,  and  reaches  out 
towards  them,  and  believes  he  receives  their 
benefit,  but  who,  while  realizing  the  effect, 
can  no  more  explain  the  method  of  its  im- 
partation  than  he  can  understand  how  his 
thought  is  connected  with  the  movement  of 
his  brain,  though  he  accepts  that  connection, 
or  explain  how  his  arm  moves  at  the  mo- 
tion of  his  mind,  though  he  daily,  hourly,  nay 
every  moment,  is  aware  that  muscle  and  nerve 
are  obedient  to  the  mandate  of  his  will.  As 
was  long  ago  well  said  by  Schleiermacher,  "To 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


clear  up  is  not  to  clear  out."  We  leave  un- 
touched the  content  of  mystery  in  worship  and 
in  life.  Thus  only  we  fulfil  their  high  behest, 
for  in  their  nature  they  are  mysteries,  high, 
we  cannot  attain  unto  them.  But  for  the 
conduct  both  of  life  and  worship  we  seek  the 
light  of  intelligence  and  reason,  that  their  mys- 
tery may  beckon  and  not  baffle  us.  For,  like 
the  heavenly  bodies  in  space,  these  spiritual 
realities  abide,  but  we  may  approach  them 
with  the  calm  reverence  of  the  astronomer  or 
with  the  heated  fancy  of  the  astrologer.  The 
latter  gazes  on  the  stars  to  turn  their  mystery 
into  the  mystification  of  portents,  which  reflect 
his  own  grotesque  and  wayward  dreams,  and 
give  birth  to  omens  both  of  delusive  hopes  and 
irrational  fears.  But  the  astronomer  gazes  up- 
ward, with  the  reverent  homage  of  intelligent 
research,  to  learn  what  the  stars  teach  him,  and 
marking  their  orbit,  motion,  order,  transforms 
what  shines  so  far  above  him  in  the  unfath- 
omable mystery  of  space  into  a  sure  and  cer- 
tain guide  for  his  pathway  on  the  earth. 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  AS    INFLUENCED  BY  THE 
HOLY   SCRIPTURES 

\\TE-  have  indicated  the  character  of  the 
Christian  Life  as  one  of  Divine  pur- 
pose and  communion,  of  brotherly  interest  and 
ministration,  of  intelligent  thought  and  investi- 
gation, both  in  the  region  of  nature  and  in  the 
realm  of  spirit.  These  features  have  been  sug- 
gested by  the  contemplation  of  the  Christian  life 
as  a  life  of  Prayer,  of  common  Prayer,  of  com- 
mon Prayer  in  the  common  tongue  of  the  living 
worshipper.  We  will  proceed  now  to  scrutinize 
more  minutely  the  elements  which  constitute 
the  substance  of  the  Ritual.  The  permanence 
and  progress  of  the  Christian  Life,  its  oneness 
with  the  past,  its  connection  with  the  present, 
and  its  anticipative  hold  upon  the  future,  are 
all  suggested  by  the  association  of  the  worship 
with  these  three  things :  the  Holy  Scriptures,  or 
sacred  literature  of  past  ages ;  the  Collects,  or 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


73 


the  devout  utterance  of  past  ages;  and  the 
Christian  Year,  or  religious  sequence  of  worship 
recalling  past  ages.  These  features  are  funda- 
mental in  the  Prayer  Book,  their  correlated 
truths  are  fundamental  in  the  normal  Christian 
life. 

Nothing  is  more  striking  than  the  association 
of  English  worship  with  the  Bible.  Its  call 
to  worship  in  the  opening  sentences  of  the 
Daily  Prayer  is  resonant  with  the  voice  of  the 
Prophets  and  Apostles  of  olden  time.  God's 
word,  not  man's,  strikes  the  key  note  of  its  de- 
votions. Whether  as  exhortation,  or  promise, 
or  invitation,  each  Scripture  sentence  brings 
with  it  the  aroma  of  an  ancient  association  to 
mingle  with  the  atmosphere  of  present  worship ; 
it  is  a  sacred  oracle  attuned  to  the  strain  and 
stress  of  the  spiritual  want  of  to-day.  And  as 
the  worship  opens,  so  it  continues.  It  is 
throughout  simply  saturated  with  the  Scriptures. 
Its  opening  and  invitatory  burst  of  praise  is  an 
old  psalm  of  the  sanctuary  and  the  synagogue. 
From  this  it  turns  to  the  Psalter,  so  rich  in  its 
record  of  spiritual  experience  that  every  mood 
of  the  religious  life  in  all  time  finds  expression  in 


74 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


it,  from  the  Alleluia  of  its  joy  to  the  De  profundis 
of  its  sorrow  and  desolation.  When  David  was 
supposed  to  have,  as  an  author,  almost  a 
monopoly  of  the  Psalter,  Edward  Irving,  that 
Jeremy  Taylor  of  Scotch  divines,  wrote  of  him, 
"  His  soul  was  like  a  harp  full-stringed  over  which 
the  angels  of  joy  and  sorrow  swept  as  they 
passed,  and  which  vibrated  to  every  touch  of 
human  want  or  emotion."  Our  own  Bishop  Lay, 
in  his  homely  and  quaint  prose,  used  to  say  of 
it, "  The  reading  of  the  Psalter  is  for  the  Episco- 
palian what  the  experience  or  class  meeting  is  for 
the  Methodist,  only  with  the  personal  pronoun 
I  subdued  or  left  out  altogether."  Then  the 
lessons  from  the  Old  and  New  Covenant  come 
on,  holding  up  ancient  history  as  a  mirror 
of  modern  motives,  and  proclaiming  the  same 
Law  and  Gospel  to  be  regnant  in  the  time  im- 
mediately present  as  in  times  far  past.  Each 
special  service  has  its  special  scripture.  In 
Baptism  we  read  from  the  Gospel  of  Christ's 
treatment  of  children  as  the  plea  that  "  he  favor- 
ably alloweth  this  charitable  work  of  ours  in 
bringing  this  infant  to  his  Holy  Baptism."  Con- 
firmation has  its  lesson  concerning  the  laying  on 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


75 


of  the  Apostles'  hands.  The  Holy  Communion 
not  only  stations  the  Law  given  by  Moses  at  its 
gate,  but  in  its  Epistle  and  Gospel  provides 
the  grace  and  truth  which  came  by  Jesus  Christ 
for  the  comfort  and  instruction  of  the  soul  which 
has  passed  through  the  gate  into  the  streets  of 
the  city  to  sit  down  at  meat  with  the  Master. 
If  the  Marriage  Service  does  not  contain  a 
Gospel,  it  refers  to  it  in  its  fine  phrase  con- 
cerning the  holy  estate  which  "  Christ  adorned 
and  beautified  with  his  presence  and  the  first 
miracle  that  he  wrought  in  Cana  of  Galilee," 
and  associates  it  with  the  Epistles  quoting  the 
commendation  of  St.  Paul  concerning  the  hon- 
orableness  of  marriage  in  all  men.  The  Burial 
Service  is  ushered  in  with  the  old  Testament's 
anticipation  of  triumph  and  consolation,  and  is 
alive  with  the  voice  of  Angels  proclaiming  the 
risen  Lord,  who  is  affirmed  to  be  the  pledge 
of  our  immortality  in  the  glowing  argument  of 
the  Apostle  Paul. 

Thus  all  life  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave  is 
wrought  about  with  Scripture.  And  what  is  the 
meaning  of  it,  if  not  this,  that  there  is  a  per- 
manence of  the  normal  religious  life  which  to  be 


76  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

profound  and  true  may,  nay  must,  draw  an 
inspiration  from  the  past,  wherein  men  lived 
and  wrought  and  suffered  under  God  as  we, 
and  yet  whose  past  looked  inevitably  on  to  our 
present,  "  God  having  provided  some  better 
thing  for  us,  that  they  without  us  should  not  be 
made  perfect."  It  is  not  the  purpose  here  to 
draw  out  a  doctrine  of  Holy  Scripture,  either 
from  the  Article  which  makes  it  a  final  arbiter  of 
doctrine,  or  from  the  liturgical  affirmation  con- 
cerning it  as  the  oracles  of  God.  It  is  patent 
from  the  use  of  it  that  the  Church  in  its  Prayer 
Book  holds  that  God  in  times  past  spake  unto 
the  fathers  by  the  Prophets,  and  hath  spoken 
unto  us  by  his  Son,  and  that  that  voice  rightly 
understood  is  the  supreme  spiritual  authority 
and  guide.  Theories  of  inspiration,  or  compo- 
sition, or  compilation,  these  fortunately  are  not 
found  in  any  part  of  the  Prayer  Book,  for  their 
place  is  in  the  outer  court  of  criticism,  and  not 
in  the  inner  court  of  the  sanctuary  where  men 
ought  to  worship.  These  come  and  go  as  men 
learn  or  unlearn,  as  the  new  light  dawns,  or  the 
old  light  glows  afresh.  But  worship  is  the  con- 
tinuous attitude  of  man  towards  God,  not  to- 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  77 

wards  the  servants  of  his  will,  even  the  holiest 
of  them.  What  the  "  sundry  times  and  divers 
manners  "  in  which  He  spake  through  men  in- 
volve, will  evolve  in  his  providence  as  like  the 
commended  Bereans  we  search  the  Scriptures, 
or  like  the  prophets  themselves  search  diligently 
what  or  what  manner  of  time  the  spirit  of  Christ 
which  was  in  them  did  signify,  "  unto  whom  it 
was  revealed  that  not  unto  themselves  but  unto 
us  they  did  minister." 

But  the  constant  quality  of  Scripture  lies  not 
in  the  realm  we  label  "  Introduction,"  in  names, 
dates,  sequences,  and  what  not  of  the  outer  form, 
but  in  that  inner  core  of  life  and  living  truth 
which  is  profitable  for  instruction  in  righteous- 
ness; in  that  Divine  quality  which  quickens 
the  spirit  by  its  inspiring  force;  in  that  prac- 
tical efficiency  which  can  fashion  the  use  of 
Divine  truth  in  all  things  unto  edification,  so 
that  the  man  of  God  may  be  perfect,  thoroughly 
furnished  unto  all  good  works.  Now  the  litur- 
gical use  of  Holy  Writ  makes  manifest  this 
quality  of  the  Scriptures,  and  applies  it  in  many 
salutary  ways.  First  of  all  it  gives  the  sense  of 
the  permanence  of  the  Divine  Presence  in  the 


78  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

life  of  humanity  in  all  its  changeable  estate; 
then  the  assurance  of  the  ineradicable  pos- 
session by  humanity  of  the  religious  instinct 
which  recognizes  God's  presence,  and  then  the 
conviction  of  the  universal  necessity  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  religious  life,  which  incorpo- 
rates God's  truth,  for  the  development  of  the 
worthiest  life  of  men.  This  on  the  conservative 
side.  And  on  the  progressive  side,  the  litur- 
gical use  of  the  Scripture  as  fully  shows  that 
the  very  nature  of  the  religious  life  is  such  that 
it  is  a  growth  up  into  God ;  that  both  the  un- 
folding capacity  of  man  and  the  unfailing  fulness 
of  God  require  and  involve  the  ever  increas- 
ing apprehension  and  enlarged  application  of 
divine  truth  on  the  part  of  men,  the  progress,  in 
fine,  of  humanity  into  a  fuller  life  in  God. 

Thus  the  lesson  of  the  Scriptures  for  the  pres- 
ent' age  is  one  of  hope,  of  widening  scope,  of 
higher  achievement,  than  all  the  past  can  show. 
By  the  liturgical  use  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  in 
its  daily  worship,  the  soul  is  brought  face  to  face 
with  both  the  permanent  and  progressive  ele- 
ments of  the  religious  life ;  its  claim  on  his  rev- 
erent faith  in  the  past  and  the  vindication  of  its 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


79 


practical  hold  on  the  things  of  the  present. 
And  it  does  all  this  by  simply  unfolding  to  the 
mind  what  religion  has  been  in  the  world  and 
how  it  has  been.  History  has  been  well  said 
to  be  "  philosophy  teaching  by  example,"  and 
the  Bible  may  be  as  truly  said  to  be  "  theology 
taught  by  life."  For  in  the  Bible,  its  narratives, 
its  poems,  its  prophecies,  its  histories,  and  its 
letters,  we  learn  at  once  of  religion  as  a  concrete 
reality.  We  find,  from  the  very  way  in  which 
its  messages  come  to  us,  that  God's  revelation 
to  men  was  a  ruling  of  them.  He  came  down 
into  life,  the  life  of  Abraham  the  individual,  of 
Israel  the  race,  not  first  of  all  into  a  literature 
through  a  book  full  formed. 

That  was  the  conception  of  Mohammed  as 
presented  in  the  Koran,  and  of  Joseph  Smith 
in  his  Mormon  Bible.  They  professed  to  re- 
ceive these  long  literary  compositions  direct 
from  heaven,  and  these  they  presented  as  the 
revelation  of  the  Divine  will  and  as  the  law 
of  the  Divine  life.  To  them  revelation  came  in 
the  form  of  a  composition.  To  the  Hebrew  it 
was  recognized  as  a  communication  to  the  soul 
and  life.  Therefore  the  Hebrew  and  the  Chris- 


.8o  THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 

tian  Scriptures  are  not  like  these  later  Bibles 
of  the  Mohammedans  and  Mormons ;  they  are 
not  compositions  about  a  life  antecedent  to  its 
actual  realization,  but  are  the  literary  outcome 
of  a  life  already  lived  or  being  lived  in  the 
recognition  of  God,  who  had  already  revealed 
himself  to  that  life  and  inspired  it.  Revelation 
to  them  was  not  in  the  letter,  but  in  the  spirit. 
Its  method  was  not  the  dictation  of  a  book,  but 
the  inauguration  of  a  life,  whose  origin,  move- 
ment, growth,  the  Book  records,  and  out  of 
which,  filled  with  the  same  inspiring  spirit  as 
the  life,  we  draw  our  instruction  and  inspiration 
as  from  the  life  itself. 

To  be  confronted  with  the  Scriptures  then 
in  worship  is  to  be  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  life  of  the  race  in  God  from  the  begin- 
ning. It  is  to  be  made  to  recognize  the  ever- 
lasting purpose  of  God  to  bring  men  to  their 
highest  self  by  bringing  them  to  Himself.  It 
is  to  be  brought  into  touch  with  the  vitality 
of  the  religious  life  we  ourselves  are  seeking 
as  evidenced  in  every  stage  of  man's  progress, 
and  to  learn  the  doctrine  of  God  and  of  man's 
relation  to  him,  not  so  much  by  dogmatic 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  8 1 

statement,  or  philosophical  speculation,  as  by 
a  contemplation  of  the  life  of  a  people  con- 
sciously led  by  him;  led  by  him  through  all 
the  centuries  as  well  as  through  the  wilder- 
ness, "to  prove  them  and  know  what  was  in 
their  heart,  whether  they  would  keep  his  com- 
mandment or  no,"  who  "  humbled  them  and 
suffered  them  to  hunger  and  fed  them  with 
manna,  that  he  might  make  them  know  that  man 
doth  not  live  by  bread  only,  but  that  by  every 
word  that  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  the 
Lord  doth  man  live." 

The  atmosphere  of  a  worship  thus  replete 
with  Scripture  is  one  which  breathes  vitality 
and  reality  into  religious  living  ;  the  vitality 
and  reality  of  the  life  of  God  in  the  life  of 
humanity.  It  discriminates  religion  from  the 
region  of  heated  fancy  and  hysteric  feeling,  as 
breathing  the  free  air  of  genuine  life  and  strug- 
gle. It  dissipates  the  doubt  that  religion  may 
be  a  passing  phase  of  man's  development,  as 
Auguste  Comte  affirmed,  proper  enough,  nay, 
inevitable  in  the  childhood  of  the  race,  but  to 
be  put  away  with  childish  things  as  the  grown 
man  enters  the  realm  of  thought  and  knowledge 
6 


82  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

and  reasonable  action.  Through  the  Scripture 
the  assurance  is  confirmed  that  that  life  cannot 
be  ephemeral  in  its  fundamental  elements  which 
has  filled  past  ages  with  its  power;  that  that 
cannot  be  a  mere  individual  sentiment  which 
has  proved  the  strength  of  a  great  and  beyond 
measure  influential  civilization.  And  thus  the 
historic  continuity  of  religion,  recorded  as  it 
was  enacted  in  the  pages  of  the  Bible,  brings 
with  it  the  conviction  of  an  everlasting  pur- 
pose of  God  to  bring  mankind  into  living  and 
loving  relation  to  himself,  the  recognition  and 
acceptance  of  which  purpose  by  man  consti- 
tutes his  religious  life.  This  affirmation  of  the 
soul,  so  strong  and  abiding,  so  salutary  and 
so  inspiring,  vindicates  itself  as  distinct  from 
delusion  by  the  fact  of  its  long  illustration  in 
the  history  of  mankind.  Thus  the  single  soul, 
the  man  of  modern  times,  we  of  to-day,  gain 
the  assurance  which  is  a  natural  deduction  from 
past  experience,  that  in  our  moral  and  spiritual 
endeavor  we  are  not  helpless  strugglers  against 
the  world  and  the  universal  trend  of  things, 
but  are  co-workers  together  with  God,  the 
unfolding  of  whose  purpose  the  Bible  portrays. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  83 

The  spirit  we  receive  out  of  the  Scriptures  is 
one  of  confidence ;  "  not  the  spirit  of  fear  but 
of  power,  of  love,  and  of  a  sound  mind." 

The  very  imperfections  and  crudities  attend- 
ing the  historical  progress  of  religion ;  the  de- 
pravities and  cruelties  mingled  with  it,  as  seen 
depicted  in  this  honest  and  almost  naive  chroni- 
cle of  Holy  Writ  ;  these  do  not  witness  against 
the  reality  or  worth  of  religion,  but  for  its  per- 
sistent power  and  for  God's  unfaltering  purpose 
to  evolve  a  moral  and  spiritual  life  for  mankind 
out  of  and  in  the  midst  of  the  most  untoward 
circumstances.  Ignorance,  stubbornness,  moral 
blindness,  abominable  idolatries,  and  debasing 
sensualities  pressed  in  upon  it  and  ofttimes 
perverted  it.  We  see  it  in  these  pages  as  a  light 
shining  in  the  darkness,  which  comprehended  it 
not ;  but  the  light  though  obscured  never  went 
out.  The  sign  and  witness  of  the  power  of  reli- 
gion were  just  these  continual  conflicts,  this  un- 
ceasing confrontment  of  evil,  with  the  rebuke  of 
God;  this  brooding  of  the  Spirit  of  God  over 
the  moral  chaos  and  the  projection  of  a  moral 
cosmos  out  of  it.  It  did  not  come  at  first  in 
perfect  form,  unstained,  unmarred,  but  was 


84  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

ever  a  growing  power  of  moral  order  as  the  mind 
grew  in  spiritual  enlightenment  and  the  con- 
science cleared  under  the  discipline  of  God's 
providence.  We  may  wonder  that  the  author 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  could  refer  to 
Gideon  and  Barak  and  Samson  and  Jephthah 
as  heroes  of  faith,  and  they  would  indeed  prove 
sorry  samples  of  sainthood  seen  by  the  after 
light ;  but  with  all  their  faults  it  was  their  faith 
in  God  which  ennobled  their  lives  above  their 
fellows,  and  rendered  possible  as  their  succes- 
sors in  the  leading  of  the  nation  such  heroes  as 
Samuel,  David,  and  the  Prophets. 

The  final  outcome  of  all  this  history,  seen  as 
we  turn  from  the  Old  Testament  to  the  New,  is 
the  crowning  vindication  of  both  the  perma- 
nence and  the  progress  of  the  religious  instinct 
guided  and  moulded  by  the  hand  of  God. 
For  of  Israel  according  to  the  flesh  came 
Christ  Jesus,  a  name  confessedly  above  every 
name  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  realm,  a  name 
to  which  all  bow  in  that  reverence  of  supreme 
deference  to  absolute  righteousness,  which 
no  force  of  will  can  repress  even  when  the 
reverence  of  obedience  is  withheld.  It  is  not 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  85 

irreverent  to  say  that  Christ  came  not  uncon- 
nected with  the  past.  His  life  was  not  pro- 
jected into  the  life  of  the  race  by  a  sudden 
Divine  fiat,  all  unrelated  to  the  life  which  had 
preceded  him.  It  was  only  "  in  the  fulness  of 
the  times"  that  God  sent  forth  his  Son  into 
the  world.  He  was  the  culmination  of  the  ever- 
lasting purpose  of  God,  which  had  been  mani- 
fest in  all  that  had  gone  before.  He  is  the 
crown  of  humanity,  as  he  is  the  earthly  image 
of  the  invisible  God;  the  Son  of  Man,  the 
Son  of  God ;  the  one  in  whom  the  law  of  God 
was  transfigured  into  the  life  of  God,  and  in 
whom  love,  which  underlies  the  law  and  is  the 
life,  reveals  itself  as  sacrifice.  He  comes  to 
us  in  the  Gospels  as  one  bearing  the  burdens 
of  humanity  and  engaged  in  all  its  activities ;  a 
very  real  personage,  who  lived  and  taught  and 
suffered ;  not  exempt  from  the  laws  pertaining 
to  humanity,  not  apart  from  its  infirmities,  but 
still  the  perfect  fulfilment  of  all  God's  thought 
concerning  it.  And  this  one,  so  matchless  in 
character,  so  boundless  in  devotion  to  his  fellow 
men,  whose  thought  still  penetrates  the  world 
and  elevates  its  spirit  to  regions  before  un- 


86  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

known  and  not  yet  attained ;  He,  the  exhaust- 
ive illustration  of  the  law  of  sacrifice  in  man's 
relation  to  his  fellow  men,  whose  word  passeth 
not  away,  but  which  speaks  with  authority  to 
the  mind  and  conscience  of  this  century,  this 
one  based  all  his  doctrine  of  man  and  all 
claim  to  their  spiritual  allegiance  on  the  assur- 
ance that  God  spake  in  him  and  that  his  being 
was  one  with  the  Father.  He  knew  man  and 
what  was  in  man  so  well  that  his  word  con- 
cerning him,  his  being,  his  relations,  his  des- 
tiny, is  recognized  as  the  supreme  word,  as  the 
word  still  regnant  in  modern  civilization. 

He  who  knew  man  so  well  has  the  witness 
that  he  knew  his  own  manhood  too,  its  nature, 
its  secret  source  of  power,  its  spiritual  relation- 
ship, its  destiny.  And  that  was  all  affirmed  to 
be  in  God,  that  was  all  depicted  as  the  fulfil- 
ment of  a  divine  purpose  which  was  from  eter- 
nity, a  plan  which  affirms  that  man's  relation 
to  God  and  his  service  to  him  is  the  ultimate 
purpose  of  his  being,  and  vindicates  religion, 
which  is  man's  recognition  and  response  to 
God's  purpose,  as  the  supreme  and  abiding 
element  of  life.  Other  elements  may  lie  latent 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  87 

in  some  or  be  obstructed  and  seem  altogether 
absent  in  others,  as  the  faculty  of  art,  or  of 
science,  or  of  philosophical  speculation,  which 
represent  the  mind  as  related  to  special  de- 
partments of  the  manifold  life  of  the  spirit. 
But  this  direct  relation  to  the  Author  of  life, 
this  supreme  relation  of  religion,  is  the  one 
which  is  universal,  which  is  permanent,  and 
which  is  the  root  of  progress  in  all  that  most 
ennobles  and  distinguishes  humanity. 

Thus  to  be  brought  in  worship  constantly 
face  to  face  with  the  Scripture  concerning 
Christ  is  to  gain  the  sense  of  that  supreme 
stability  and  absolute  worth  in  religion  which 
makes  it  man's  one  secure  possession.  Tracing 
in  the  older  Scripture  the  religious  struggle 
and  growth  of  man  up  to  Christ,  and  in  the 
newer  the  life  and  enthusiasm  and  joyous  con- 
fidence of  men  believing  in  and  inspired  by 
Him,  this  brings  the  assurance  of  a  growth 
and  development  of  spiritual  power  through  all 
its  changes,  which  stamps  it  as  a  divine  real- 
ity, which  the  world  can  never  give  nor  take 
away.  For,  as  Dean  Stanley  so  well  said,  "  It 
is  the  transitory  which  stands  still  and  fades 


88  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

and  falls  to  pieces;  the  eternal  continues  by 
changing  its  form  in  accordance  with  the  move- 
ment of  advancing  ages."  The  Scriptures  in 
fine  breathe  an  atmosphere  in  which  martyrs 
and  confessors  may  well  be  bred,  as  they  have 
been  bred ;  the  atmosphere  of  a  stalwart  man- 
hood and  of  a  quenchless  enthusiasm.  And 
this  is  the  characteristic  which  the  Scriptural 
quality  of  the  Prayer  Book's  worship  engenders 
in  its  revelation  both  of  the  permanence  and 
progress  of  the  spiritual  life  of  men. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  89 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  BEARING  OF  THE  COLLECTS   ON  THE 
CHRISTIAN  LIFE 

IN  the  devotional  use  of  the  Collects  of  the 
ages,  as  given  in  the  Prayer  Book,  the 
worshipper  voices  his  prayers  and  praises  in 
the  language  of  other  men  and  other  times. 
No  objection  need  lie  against  such  worship  as 
archaic  and  artificial,  as  a  crass  conservatism 
which  cramps  worship  by  restricting  its  expres- 
sion to  an  ancient  formula,  and  by  depreciating 
the  utterance  of  present  wants  in  the  language 
of  the  present  hour.  For  the  fundamental 
wants  of  human  nature  and  the  essential  adora- 
tion of  the  heart  are  the  same  in  all  ages. 
What  has  once  expressed  them  well  has  ca- 
pacity still  to  utter  them.  Common  worship 
can  only  voice  the  fundamental  and,  because 
fundamental,  the  common  wants  of  men.  The 
special  exigency  of  each  individual  must  find 
its  expression  in  the  closet.  "The  heart 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


knoweth  its  own  bitterness,  and  the  stranger 
intermeddleth  not  with  its  joy."  In  the  con- 
gregation we  must  express  what  we  share  in 
common,  one  with  another.  If  ours  is  to  be 
common  worship,  not  individualistic,  a  com- 
mon form  must  fashion  it.  It  cannot  depend 
on  any  one  man's  mood,  nor  express  itself 
through  any  one  man's  interpretation.  The 
demand  of  common  worship  is  for  common 
utterance.  Now  what  common  utterance  can 
promise  so  much  completeness  as  that  which  is 
common,  not  merely  to  one  community  or  to 
one  age,  but  which  is  replete  with  the  aspira- 
tion and  supplication  of  all  the  ages;  which 
is  not  a  modern  manufacture  but  an  ancient 
growth;  which  condenses  into  itself  the  sigh- 
ing and  singing  of  hearts  long  since  at  rest, 
together  with  the  exultations  and  the  plaints 
of  those  still  compassed  about  with  the  trials 
and  the  joys  of  this  present  time?  This  is 
the  usage  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

There  was  temptation  enough  at  the  time  of 
its  formation  to  cut  off  altogether  from  past 
usages  which  had  been  so  overladen  with  abuse. 
But  the  liturgical  instinct  was  keen  and  subtle 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


enough  to  respond  to  the  vibrant  touch  and 
living  association  of  the  old  forms  of  devotion. 
The  Reformers  did  not  think  they  were  cutting 
themselves  off  from  the  true  life  of  the  past. 
They  were  reaffirming  it  rather  by  their  ex- 
cision of  so  much  cumbrous  and  illegitimate 
overgrowth,  which  hid  the  form  and  perverted 
the  spirit  of  that  past.  They  felt  the  more 
drawn  to  the  heroes  of  the  age  of  primitive 
simplicity,  in  that  they  were  striving  to  restore 
that  primitive  simplicity.  They  would  not 
make  or  declare  themselves  ecclesiastical  or- 
phans by  rejection  of  the  Fathers.  The  fires 
of  devotion  which  burned  anew  in  them  leaped 
in  response  to  the  enkindling  devotions  of  the 
olden  time.  Thus  out  of  that  past  they  drew 
those  matchless  forms  and  set  them  to  our 
lips,  so  that,  with  hearts  attuned  to  the  same 
sanctity  of  desire,  the  mouth  might  speak  with 
the  same  melody  of  utterance. 

We  cannot  here  enter  into  any  examination 
of  the  wonderful  beauty,  dignity,  serenity, 
spirituality,  of  these  ancient  Collects.  Each 
utters  its  own  separate  note,  yet  all  combine, 
through  the  unity  of  the  Christian  year,  into 


THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 


a  rich  harmony  of  rounded  Christian  expe- 
rience. But  the  chief  value  for  us  of  the  use 
of  these  matchless  forms  lies  not  in  their 
pervasive  beauty  and  order,  though  these 
invest  the  Christian  life  with  a  sense  of  its 
completeness  and  elevation,  which  suggest  its 
refinement  of  tone  as  well  as  its  strength  of 
character.  It  lies  in  the  impression  of  the  per- 
manence and  progress  of  a  Christian  experience 
which  comes  inevitably,  if  unconsciously,  from 
using  as  our  own  the  forms  which  framed  the 
petitions  of  the  bygone  saints  of  old.  With 
the  Lord's  Prayer  falling  from  the  Master's 
lips  as  the  key  note,  the  stately  progression 
continues  from  age  to  age,  from  the  days  of  St. 
Chrysostom  to  the  times  of  the  Reformation. 
For  with  the  older  Collects  are  mingled  those 
now  old  to  us,  but  new  when  the  Prayer  Book 
was  compiled,  namely,  the  comprehensive  and 
sonorous  "  Prayer  for  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men,"  and  the  "General  Thanksgiving"  of 
Bishop  Reynolds,  which  have  vindicated  by 
their  fulness  of  meaning  and  beauty  of  expres- 
sion their  right  to  stand  among  the  more  an- 
cient forms.  But  this  use  of  the  old  forms,  so 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


93 


.apt  in  the  expression  of  our  own  wants,  inten- 
sifies the  impression  of  our  unity  with  the 
Christian  life  of  old.  That  life  is  ever  indi- 
vidual, but  not  simply  individual;  it  is  a  life 
of  communion  and  fellowship  with  all  saintly 
souls,  or  souls  striving  to  be  saintly.  It  is  a 
practical  realization  of  that  communion  of 
saints  which  we  declare  in  the  Creed  to  be 
an  article  of  our  belief.  It  brings  in  the 
sense  of  oneness  with  the  vast  throng  whom 
no  man  can  number,  who  have  striven  and  suf- 
fered and  been  consoled  as  we;  of  that  "one 
army  of  the  living  God,"  whose  equipment  and 
armament  may  have  varied,  but  whose  advance 
has  been  steadfast  through  all  the  changes  of 
the  centuries.  It  imparts  a  sense  of  kinship 
with  the  martyrs  and  confessors  who  have  suf- 
fered for  the  faith;  with  the  saints  and  the 
doctors  who  have  adorned  it  with  the  resplen- 
dent light  of  learning  and  devotion;  with  the 
heroes  who  have  stood  for  it  amid  all  contend- 
ing forces  of  pagan  unbelief,  or  the  tyranny  of 
unrighteous  ecclesiastical  rule;  with  the  vast 
multitude  who  in  all  ages  have  lived  faithful 
and  true  lives  in  the  following  of  their  Lord, 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


who  indistinguishable  from  one  another  yet 
stand  in  their  intermingled  strength  and  sweet- 
ness like  the  milky  way  of  the  skies,  a  bridge 
of  light  leading  to  the  celestial  country.  Yes, 
as  the  Christian  worshipper  to-day  uses  the 
same  petitions  which  they  of  old  time  prof- 
fered, he  gains  a  vivid  sense  of  the  power  and 
reality  of  these  prayers  through  the  attesting 
lives  of  those  who  by  their  use  gained  strength, 
and  feels  himself  conjoined  by  an  indissoluble 
bond  of  unity  to  the  whole  family  of  God.  For 
therein,  as  in  the  Scriptures,  he  finds  witness 
again  to  the  permanence  of  that  life  to  which 
his  own  soul  is  so  strongly  moved,  and  holds 
on  in  increasing  confidence  to  the  reality  of 
that  faith  and  hope  to  sustain  him,  which  has 
upheld  through  all  the  ages  the  highest  life  of 
men. 

But  not  only  do  these  Collects  minister  to 
the  sense  of  permanence  and  oneness  of  the 
Christian  life  since  the  coming  of  the  Christ. 
Its  progress  is  not  less  suggested  and  assured. 
For  these  prayers  have  themselves  come  into 
being  in  the  ever  advancing  stages  of  that  life, 
and  themselves  form  a  progression  in  worship 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


95 


as  in  life.  It  was  aptly  said  by  that  lofty  reli- 
gious genius,  the  matchless  Phillips  Brooks, 
that  "the  only  way  to  get  rid  of  a  past  is  to 
make  a  future  of  it."  And  we  may  say  as 
truly,  that  the  only  way  to  really  gain  a  past 
and  make  it  ours,  is  to  grasp  its  life  so  as  to  re- 
produce it  in  forms  fitted  to  our  time  and  cir- 
cumstances. It  must  not  remain  to  us  simply 
a  bygone  thing  of  wonder  and  admiration,  with 
which  we  have  no  vital  connection,  like  an 
Egyptian  pyramid,  or  a  cave  dwelling  in  a 
cliff.  These  belong  to  a  civilization  with 
which  we  have  nothing  in  common,  from  which 
we  can  gain  no  impulse,  to  which  we  turn  only 
in  curiosity,  as  we  turn  to  a  fossil  form  em- 
bedded in  the  rocks.  The  past  becomes  ours 
only  as  it  vivifies  our  life.  It  is  real  to  us  not 
as  a  mere  accumulation  of  material  deposited, 
a  talent  wrapped  in  a  napkin  as  in  a  shroud. 
To  be  living  to  us,  as  it  was  to  them  of  old 
time,  it  must  be  as  the  seed  which  reproduces 
a  harvest,  similar  but  not  the  same.  So  these 
ancient  Collects  make  the  past  real  to  us, 
as  they  make  the  present  real;  their  vitality 
as  ancient  witnesses  depends  on  the  vitality 


96  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

of  their  present  ministration,  in  joining  past 
and  present  together  in  one.  They  in  worship 
perform  the  function  so  essential  to  the  abid- 
ing permanence  and  progress  of  the  Christian 
life,  which  is,  to  quote  the  felicitous  phrase  of 
Pere  Gratrey,  "To  speak  the  Word  of  God 
afresh  to  every  age,  in  accordance  with  the 
novelty  of  the  age,  and  the  eternal  antiquity 
of  the  truth." 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


97 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  YEAR 
ON  THE   CHRISTIAN   LIFE 


nr^HE  Christian  year  is  that  happy  and  in- 
-*-  delible  feature  of  the  Common  Prayer 
which  adds  its  testimony  to  the  value  of  the 
life  which  is  ever  new  as  it  is  ever  old.  As 
the  Bible  is  witness  to  the  permanence  and 
progress  of  religion  in  all  ages,  as  the  Col- 
lects bear  their  testimony  to  the  religious  per- 
manence and  progress  of  all  the  Christian 
centuries,  so  this  Christian  year,  tracing  the 
footsteps  of  our  Lord  from  Bethlehem's  man- 
ger to  the  ascension  from  Olivet,  is  the  attes- 
tation to  the  life  and  power  of  Him  who  is  both 
the  root  and  the  offspring  of  David,  the  alpha 
and  the  omega,  the  beginning  and  the  ending, 
which  is  and  which  was  and  which  is  to  come, 
and  to  that  life  of  his  followers  in  Him,  which 
if  it  be  a  permanent  abiding  in  his  love  must 
be  a  continuous  growth  into  his  image. 


98  THE   PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 

It  is  in  the  devotional  progress  of  the  Chris- 
tian year  that  the  religious  life  is  brought  face 
to  face  with  the  Lord  and  Master  of  it ;  with 
the  Christ  which  was  of  old  that  he  might  be 
formed  anew  in  every  believing  heart.  And 
that  life  as  we  trace  its  stages  is  seen  and  felt 
to  be  the  ever  expanding  life,  perfect  at  each 
stage,  yet  each  stage  a  stage  of  perfection  be- 
yond that  which  preceded  it.  The  life  of  the 
obedient  boy  passed  beyond  the  abnegation  of 
the  passive  infant  life;  the  life  of  perfect  ser- 
vice in  the  home  to  earthly  parents  budded 
into  the  recognition  and  acceptance  of  wider 
service  in  the  ampler  house  of  the  Heav- 
enly Father  ;  the  years  of  perfect  labor  in 
the  workshop  emerged  through  the  tempta- 
tion struggle  of  the  wilderness  into  sterner 
struggle  in  the  world's  wilderness  of  sin  ;  the 
perfect  teaching  and  the  perfect  work  (the 
parable  and  miracle  of  perfect  devotion)  deep- 
ened into  the  perfect  obedience  of  suffering 
and  the  cross,  wherein  we  find  the  culmina- 
tion of  the  perfect  sacrifice  which  runs  through 
and  consecrates  every  feature  of  that  sacred 
life.  We  see  the  mount  of  exaltation  rising 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


99 


from  out  the  very  edge  of  the  valley  of  death's 
shadow.  The  "  It  is  finished  "  of  the  earthly 
renunciation  becomes  the  transition  point  to 
the  sphere  of  heavenly  dominion.  The  burial  is 
the  seed  of  resurrection,  the  perfect  submission 
of  the  cross,  the  germ  of  perfect  power  on  the 
throne.  As  we  thus  follow  the  steps  of  that 
most  holy  life,  we  find  in  it  the  highest  illus- 
tration of  spiritual  permanence  and  progress; 
ever  full  life  in  God,  ever  the  expanding  power 
of  that  life.  And  thus  the  Master  becomes  all 
our  own.  His  word  transforms  God's  general 
law  into  a  direct  personal  appeal,  and  witnesses 
to  the  divine  calling  of  every  portion  of  our  life 
and  to  the  inevitable  progress  of  it,  if  it  be  life 
in  him.  It  translates  all  its  obligation  into  the 
realm  of  love,  and  suffuses  the  snowy  purity 
of  its  divine  morality  with  the  warmth  of  per- 
sonal affection  and  allegiance.  Thus  the  reli- 
gious life  is  made  full  as  it  is  made  personal, 
for,  in  the  words  of  Tennyson,  the  poet  prophet 
of  our  time,  "  Christianity  with  its  divine  mo- 
rality, but  without  the  central  figure  of  Christ, 
the  Son  of  Man,  would  become  cold,  and  it  is 
fatal  for  religion  to  lose  its  warmth." 


I0o  THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 

Above  all  other  aids  to  devotion  in  the 
Prayer  Book  the  use  of  the  Christian  Year 
makes  prominent  this  one  distinctive  feature 
of  the  Christian  life.  By  it  our  gaze  is  centred 
on  a  person,  and  faith  is  disclosed  as  a  living 
relation  to  him,  and  is  not  depicted  as  chiefly 
an  acceptance  of  propositions  about  him,  which 
is  commonly  styled  acquiescence  in  dogma. 
Dogma  has  its  rightful  place.  It  is,  like  the 
science  of  any  truth,  a  matter  for  the  schools. 
The  mathematical  formulae  of  the  sun's  mo- 
tion, of  the  parallax  of  the  stars,  of  the  law 
of  gravitation,  are  most  valuable,  nay,  essen- 
tial and  inevitable,  in  giving  us  fixed  laws  of 
thought  concerning  them.  But  the  sun's  light 
and  warmth  are  what  we  live  by.  It  is  basking 
in  the  sunlight,  not  the  acceptance  of  or  acqui- 
escence in  accurate  formulas  of  scientific  pre- 
cision concerning  its  nature  and  action,  which 
sends  the  glow  of  life  through  our  frames. 
Botany  gives  us  the  science  of  the  earth's  flora 
and  clears  our  thought  concerning  it.  But  we 
live  by  the  garden,  not  by  the  treatise  upon  it. 
These  sciences  do  not  add  to  or  make  potent 
the  facts  of  which  they  treat.  They  only  clas- 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


sify  and  explain  them.  And  it  is  so  with  dog- 
matic theology.  It  is  a  mental  clearance.  It 
possesses  the  value  of  an  accurate  statement  of 
Christian  truths  and  of  their  relations.  But  to 
accept  a  dogma  is  not  salvation.  Salvation  is 
to  accept  Him  whom  the  dogma  defines.  The 
Prayer  Book's  conception,  judged  by  its  use, 
is  not  salvation  by  propositions,  but  salvation 
by  Christ.  Its  baptismal  requirement  is  not  a 
confession,  or  philosophical  explication  of  doc- 
trine, but  a  creed,  an  acceptance  of  facts  which 
bind  the  soul  to  a  living  person.  And  the 
Christian  Year  has  for  its  object,  not  the  in- 
stilling of  a  scheme  of  doctrine,  but  the  vivid 
presentation  of  a  living  Lord,  whom  to  know 
is  life  eternal,  whom  to  love  is  bliss  ineffable, 
"whom  to  serve  is  to  reign." 

The  normal  Christian  life  as  indicated  by  the 
features  of  its  worship  just  enumerated,  viz.  its 
Scriptural  association,  its  use  of  the  ancient 
Collects,  and  the  following  of  the  Christian 
Year,  is  thus  portrayed  as  a  life  of  assured 
reality  as  historically  vindicated,  of  legitimate 
development  as  historically  associated,  of  gen- 
uine vitality  as  rooted  in  the  historic  Christ. 


102  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

It  holds  within  it  a  sense  of  permanence,  and  a 
prophecy  of  progress,  which  strengthen  and 
irradiate  it  with  the  illimitable  hope  which 
affirms,  "  The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers. " 
One  who  is  a  partaker  of  it  does  not  wander  in 
the  realm  of  hectic  dreams,  does  not  follow 
illusive  phantoms,  does  not  chas*e  elusive  un- 
realities. He  dwells  in  the  secret  place  of  the 
Most  High.  There  is  a  calmness  within  which 
comes  of  a  sense  of  permanent  possession,  and 
a  vitality  which  indicates  healthy  conviction 
and  enduring  energy. 

But  for  all  this,  one  of  the  chief  charges 
which  is  brought  against  religion  to-day  is,  not 
that  it  has  no  value  of  restraint  and  guidance 
for  the  unthinking  and  ignorant,  but  that  it  is 
destined  to  pass  as  unvindicated  to  minds  en- 
lightened by  the  disclosures  of  knowledge  and 
thought  characteristic  of  this  century.  It  has 
had,  men  say,  its  uses  and  abuses,  but  what 
renders  it  a  creed  outworn  is  that  its  postu- 
lates are  not  verifiable.  It  is  an  instrument  of 
the  past.  Henceforth  men  will  be  guided  by 
what  they  know,  not  by  what  they  have  be- 
lieved. Much  of  the  indifference  to  religion 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


103 


lurks  in  the  suspicion  that  it  dwells  in  the  re- 
gion of  uncertainties. 

It  is  an  immense  tribute  to  the  value  of 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  that  it  generates 
a  spirit  the  opposite  of  all  this.  It  stands 
for  the  distinct  credibility  and  reliability  of 
the  data  on  which  its  worship  is  based  and  by 
which  its  life  is  vindicated;  not  directly  as  it 
were,  but  rather  presumptively,  as  involved  in 
the  devotional  use  of  its  historical  documents. 
And  the  question  arises,  Is  the  Prayer  Book 
justified  in  this  use?  Whatever  it  teaches,  has 
it  a  right  to  teach  that  the  religious  element  in 
mankind  is  a  valid  and  fundamental  character- 
istic, a  permanent  postulate  of  man's  nature,  and 
not  a  temporary  form  of  his  experience  ?  Is  it 
indeed,  can  it  be  shown  to  be,  an  expanding 
power  conditioning  man's  noblest  growth, 
because  rooted  in  the  profoundest  depths  of 
his  being? 

There  is  but  one  answer  to  this  challenge 
from  one  nurtured  in  the  use  of  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer.  The  religious  element  in 
man  is  as  fundamental  and  pervasive  as  any 
other  element  of  his  nature.  If  catholicity  or 


IO4 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


ubiquity  of  presence  is  a  testimony  to  validity, 
it  can  stand  confident  in  the  presence  of  sci- 
ence, art,  or  literature.  These,  which  seek 
at  times  to  replace  religion,  are  its  children, 
and  remind  one  of  Lear's  ungrateful  daughters 
when  they  try  to  dethrone  their  parent.  Are 
the  results  of  these  declared  verifiable  because 
an  eclipse  may  be  forecast,  because  the  frame 
thrills  at  the  touch  of  beauty,  or  the  mind  re- 
sponds in  consent  to  intellectual  appeal  ?  But 
has  not  religion  its  verification  in  its  results? 
Was  ever  any  vindication  of  the  truth  more  tri- 
umphant than  that  given  by  the  Person  of  the 
Master  of  our  souls,  when  he  claims  to  be  the 
Truth  ?  Does  Christ  make  no  convincing  appeal 
to  the  heart  or  the  intellect  ?  Were  eyes  ever 
smitten  with  such  a  vision  of  loveliness  as  the 
soul  by  the  image  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ?  Has 
Christ's  word  no  verification  in  the  realms  of 
human  life  which  it  has  purified  and  sweetened, 
in  the  realms  of  thought  it  has  cleared  and  ele- 
vated, in  the  regions  of  action  it  has  made  just 
and  merciful  and  reasonable  and  strong  ?  Chris- 
tian civilization,  with  all  its  faults  and  crudi- 
ties and  unrealized  possibilities,  is,  compared 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


with  any  other  civilization,  a  potent  vindica- 
tion of  Christian  truth.  The  Christian  re- 
ligion stands  fearlessly  before  the  Master's 
searching  test,  "by  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them."  The  leavening  power  of  that  civiliza- 
tion has  been  the  mind  of  Christ;  the  mind  of 
Christ  was  the  consummate  flower  of  the  long 
abiding  of  Israel  under  the  shadow  of  the  Al- 
mighty, when  once  touched  by  the  light  which 
streamed  direct  from  heaven.  And  the  fruitage 
of  that  mind,  which  dwelt  in  the  secret  place 
of  the  Most  High,  has  been  the  spiritualiza- 
tion  of  life,  the  elevation  of  its  ethical  standard, 
the  purification  of  its  manners,  the  repression 
of  its  animalism,  the  ennobling  of  manhood, 
the  elevation  of  womanhood,  the  amelioration 
of  childhood.  The  vast  expansion  of  sympathy, 
help,  enlightenment,  and  kindly  care  which  we 
call  the  humanitarian  movement  of  our  time, 
finds  its  root  in  Christ's  life  and  word.  No 
department  of  that  life  but  the  mind  of  Jesus 
has  touched,  and  touching  adorned,  nay,  rather 
expanded  and  glorified, 

"  As  if  they  surely  knew  their  sovran  Lord  was  by." 

And  yet  it  is  the  judgment  of   sober  reason 


I06  THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 

that  in  its  effect  upon  social  institutions  and 
the  intricate  problems  of  human  competition 
and  co-operation  that  mind  is  not  only  unex- 
hausted, but  has  scarcely  begun  to  be  felt  and 
understood.  The  abolition  of  slavery  may  be 
regarded  as  but  the  prelude  to  that  full  free- 
dom of  mankind  when  once  the  Son  shall  have 
made  it  free,  and  it  shall  be  free  indeed. 
Therefore  we  say  that  the  legitimacy  of  reli- 
gion as  a  factor  in  man's  life  is  verifiable.  No 
fulfilment  of  scientific  prophecy  as  of  the  real 
presence  of  an  unseen  planet,  no  building  up  of 
an  unknown  and  extinct  creation  from  a  frag- 
ment of  its  bone,  no  vindication  of  scientific 
prediction,  in  fine,  affords  clearer  evidence  of 
the  truth  of  its  data  and  the  soundness  of  its 
methods,  than  is  furnished  to  religion  by  its 
salutary  and  ennobling  influence  on  the  indi- 
vidual, on  society,  on  the  state.  "  That  which 
we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  and  which  we  have 
looked  upon,  and  our  hands  have  handled,  of  the 
word  of  life,"  in  its  effects,  is  potent  verifica- 
tion of  the  divine  reality,  of  that  word  seen, 
looked  upon,  and  handled  by  the  Apostles  in 
its  source,  the  person  of  the  Christ. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


107 


In  derogation  of  this  claim,  however,  men 
are  not  slow  to  point  to  many  evils  which  have 
been  attendant  on  the  development  of  religion 
and  to  some  generated  by  it.  The  Inquisi- 
tion, indeed,  is  not  a  lovely  feature  of  Christian 
ecclesiasticism,  nor  the  patronage  of  slavery  in 
Christian  times,  nor  the  persecution  of  the 
Jews,  nor  the  auto-da-ft  of  heretics.  Super- 
stition and  fanaticism  have  all  along  beclouded 
the  truth  of  Christianity,  and  worldliness  and 
ambition  have  continually  perverted  its  path- 
way. But  the  question  is  not  whether  religion 
sprang  forth  complete  and  purified  in  the  be- 
ginning, not  whether  it  has  made  no  mistakes, 
and  cherished  no  errors,  and  enforced  no  wrongs, 
but  whether  it  has  persisted  with  the  vigor  of 
an  original  force,  until  it  has  become  more 
and  more  a  power  for  good  in  the  life  of  men. 
Neither  art  nor  science  can  stand  the  test 
sought  to  be  applied  to  the  disparagement  of 
religion.  Astrology  and  alchemy  once  stood 
in  the  place  now  held  by  astronomy  and  chem- 
istry. These  were  erratic  movements  in  the 
course  of  scientific  progress,  which  do  not,  how- 
ever, throw  doubt  on  the  validity  of  science. 


I08  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

Something  was  gained  even  by  their  fanciful 
investigations  for  the  science  which  emerged 
from  their  bewilderments  and  discarded  them. 
^Esthetics  form  still  a  valid  department  of  man's 
culture,  for  taste  is  a  persistent  element  of  hu- 
man nature  which  cannot  be  extirpated,  though 
its  final  decisions  contradict  and  bar  out  the 
earlier  dicta  of  its  utterance.  Angelo  and 
Tintoret,  Beethoven  and  Wagner,  are  still 
valid  interpreters  of  beauty  to  sight  and  sound, 
though  plastic  art  has  developed  from  the  war- 
paint of  the  Indian  to  the  glow  of  Claude  and 
Titian,  and  the  tom-tom  of  the  savage  may 
have  been  the  remote  progenitor  of  the  unfin- 
ished Symphony  of  Schumann.  In  fine,  any 
valid  endowment  of  human  nature  vindicates 
its  permanent  vitality  by  its  power  of  survival 
over  error,  and  by  its  growth  through  imper- 
fection to  perfect  form.  It  is  a  strong  and 
striking  tribute  to  the  presence  of  an  eternal 
force  within  the  Church  that  it  contains  this 
power  of  reformation  and  recuperation.  Ref- 
ormation is  not  something  to  be  excused  and 
apologized  for,  as  though  it  were  a  blot,  though 
a  necessary  blot,  upon  the  fair  fame  of  the 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


109 


Church;  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  an  unlovely 
scar,  a  disfigurement  of  the  sacred  body,  which 
it  behooves  us  to  hide  as  much  as  possible;  a 
witness  to  wounds  more  than  to  healing  power. 
No,  just  that  act  of  recuperation  from  dire  dis- 
ease, which  we  call  in  the  Church  the  Reforma- 
tion, is  the  sacred  witness  to  the  power  of  divine 
life  within  it.  Christ  said,  —  I  quote  the  pun- 
gent phrase,  —  "  Christ  said  the  Church  should 
not  die,  but  he  did  not  say  it  should  never  be 
sick."  And  to  come  through  enfeebling  sick- 
ness to  jocund  health  vindicates  the  inherent 
vitality  of  the  frame.  One  might  as  well  be 
apologetic  for  his  renewed  vigor  after  his  recov- 
ery from  the  typhoid  fever,  which  has  purged 
his  system  of  many  noxious  germs,  as  to  be 
ashamed  and  to  speak  in  bated  breath,  as  of 
some  family  scandal,  of  that  manifestation  of 
germinant  divine  power  in  the  Church  which 
we  call  the  Reformation.  It  is  rather  a  strong 
proof  of  the  permanence  of  the  Church  that  it  can 
"be  transformed  by  the  renewing  of  its  mind." 
But,  once  more,  men  say,  that  for  all  its 
early  origin  and  persistent  hold,  for  all  the 
purifying  power  it  shows  in  what  we  call  the 


HO  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

permanent  relations  of  man's  life,  religion  yet 
differs  fatally  from  art  and  science  in  that  its 
fundamental  postulate  is  not  knowledge,  but 
faith,  not  conviction  which  comes  of  known 
fact,  but  assumption  which  arises  from  felt 
necessity.  Its  evidence  is  from  the  realm  of 
the  unseen,  its  substance  is  not  of  possession 
but  of  hope. 

What  then  shall  we  say  about  the  solid 
globe?  Modern  science  reduces  it  to  force, 
and  the  conflict  or  co-operation  of  forces.  It 
too  is  the  visible  effect  of  an  unseen  power 
which  we  assume  from  a  felt  necessity,  that  is, 
if  any  coherence  is  to  be  found  in  nature,  and 
any  coherent  reading  of  it,  which  we  call  sci- 
ence. To  read  it  at  all,  man  must  assume 
things  which  he  cannot  prove,  assume  them 
from  the  felt  necessity  of  the  case ;  as,  namely, 
the  permanence  of  natural  law,  the  faithful 
report  of  the  senses  to  the  brain,  and  the  integ- 
rity and  reliability  of  the  action  of  our  intel- 
lectual powers.  These  are  the  assumptions  of 
science,  in  the  realm  of  the  unseen ;  not  irra- 
tional but  beyond  the  region  of  proof.  They  are 
an  illustration  of  what  the  great  Laureate  said, 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  Iri 

"  All  that  is  worth  proving  is  beyond  the  power 
of  proof."  Religion  does  nothing  more.  It 
only  acts  in  a  different  department  of  our  be- 
ing, in  that  which  allies  us  with  the  unseen 
and  eternal  rather  than  with  the  visible  and 
temporal.  Man's  spiritual  nature  is  irrepres- 
sible, it  is  originant,  persistent,  expansive, 
manifest  in  its  effects,  and  these  of  the  highest 
worth.  And  it  cannot  be  irrational  to  rest 
confident  in  the  postulates  it  involves,  of  God, 
of  man's  spiritual  nature,  of  ethical  relation, 
of  religious  aspiration,  seeing  these  are  the 
inherent  necessities  for  the  explication  of  its 
phenomena  which  prove  their  validity  by  their 
worth.  The  one  irrational  conclusion  would 
be  to  affirm  that  our  consciousness  is  true  in 
its  deliverances  concerning  nature,  and  false  in 
its  deliverances  concerning  morals.  If  we  dis- 
trust it  as  it  speaks  in  conscience,  we  must 
distrust  it  as  it  speaks  in  reason.  To  sweep 
away  as  invalid  the  postulates  of  religion  is 
to  declare  untrustworthy  the  postulates  of  sci- 
ence; is  to  bring  in  universal  scepticism. 

We  hold  then  that  religion,  as  taught  and 
assumed  in  the  Prayer  Book,  is  a  permanent 
possession  of  mankind,  and  that  the  religious 


112  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

life  which  it  advocates  is  a  life  of  unclouded 
rationality,  of  progressive  power,  of  illimitable 
hope ;  it  is  secure,  it  is  inalienable.  It  has  the 
promise  of  the  life  which  now  is  and  of  that 
which  is  to  come.  Its  energies  are  called  out 
in  steadfast  and  enthusiastic  action,  for  they 
are  co-operative  with  God's  purpose.  Its  aspi- 
ration after  things  honest,  true,  lovely,  and  of 
good  report  (in  every  realm  of  God's  creation) 
is  hopeful  and  courageous,  for  it  is  the  fulfil- 
ment of  God's  plan.  It  is  assured  as  it  looks 
back,  or  around,  or  before,  or  above,  for  its 
call  is  to  "the  confidence  of  a  certain  faith," 
and  to  "the  comfort  of  a  reasonable,  religious, 
and  holy  hope."  It  is  not  a  negative  denial  of 
life's  fulness,  but  a  positive  assertion  of  man's 
divine  capacity  to  grow  ever  more  and  more 
both  in  the  knowledge  and  manifestation  of 
the  truth.  It  is  not  hesitant,  or  apologetic, 
and  cannot  be  ashamed.  Its  voice  is  a  veri- 
table Sursum  Corda,  whether  it  call  to  duty, 
to  conflict,  or  to  achievement,  and  the  soul's 
true  answer  is,  "  I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto 
the  hills,  from  whence  cometh  my  strength. 
My  help  cometh  from  the  Lord,  which  made 
heaven  and  earth." 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


CHAPTER   X 

THE  CHRISTIAN   LIFE  AS  TAUGHT  BY  THE 
SACRAMENT   OF  BAPTISM 

\  II  7"E  are  now  to  look  at  the  normal  Chris- 
tian life  as  taught  by  the  sacraments, 
as  they  are  ministered  according  to  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer.  About  these  sacraments 
the  storm  of  controversy  has  raged,  so  that  in 
entering  their  atmosphere  iMs  difficult  not  to 
be  engulfed  in  it.  But  on  any  theory  the  sacra- 
ments themselves  witness  to  all  men  two  great 
conceptions  of  life,  viz.  life  begotten  of  God  and 
life  nourished  by  God.  They  bear  their  tes- 
timony to  the  vital  connection  of  God's  spirit 
and  man's  spirit.  They  indicate  by  their  strik- 
ing symbolism  that  the  truly  natural  life  is 
what  we  call  the  supernatural  life,  by  which  is 
meant  that  man's  true  nature  joins  him  on  to 
God,  that  the  life  which  is  of  God  must  be 
man's  life,  or  he  falls  short  of  the  ideal  of  his 
8 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


life.  In  this  normal  Christian  life,  or  the  re- 
ligious life  in  conformity  to  its  law,  Baptism 
stands  for  the  initiation,  and  the  Holy  Com- 
munion for  the  perpetuation  and  development. 
What  light  they  throw  upon  the  normal  Chris- 
tian life,  as  they  are  conditioned  and  minis- 
tered by  the  ritual  of  the  Prayer  Book,  we 
proceed  now  to  inquire. 

We  look  first  at  Baptism.  And  the  first  point 
which  strikes  us  in  relation  to  Baptism  is  its 
universality  of  intention.  It  is  meant  for  all, 
men,  women,  and  children ;  nor  is  it  in  the 
Prayer  Book  restricted  to  any  special  class  of 
these.  It  is  not  limited  to  children  of  commu- 
nicants. The  special  sin  of  neglect  by  father  or 
mother  does  not  furnish  an  impediment.  Ille- 
gitimacy of  nature  does  not  banish  from  the 
legitimacy  of  the  Kingdom.  Baptism  in  its 
primal  attitude  stands  for  the  universal  grace  of 
God;  it  declares  a  Divine  Fatherhood  which  is 
not  willing  that  any  should  perish.  It  proclaims 
that,  as  the  redemption  through  Christ  is  for  all, 
so  his  Kingdom,  in  which  his  life  maybe  most 
completely  and  normally  lived,  is  for  all.  By 
this  symbolical  witness  and  seal  to  the  largeness 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


of  God's  mercy  and  forgiveness,  Baptism  makes 
known  that,  in  gaining  this  life  from  above, 
it  is  not  man  who  first  seeks  God,  but  God 
who  first  seeks  man.  It  teaches  that  man's 
attitude  in  regard  to  God's  grace  is  not  to 
create  it  or  compel  it,  or  to  deserve  it,  to  win 
it  by  penance  or  to  wring  its  reluctant  com- 
pliance by  agony  of  argument  and  the  soul's 
distress,  but  that  his  true  attitude  is  simple 
acceptance  of  it.  In  redemption  he  grasps  a 
hand  already  held  out.  The  grace  and  help 
from  above  are  the  prius  in  man's  spiritual 
life.  "We  love  him  because  he  first  loved 
us."  And  this  love  which  wrought  the  re- 
demption in  Jesus  Christ  is  not  repelled  by 
any  hereditary  taint  which  we  call  original 
sin,  —  so  called  because  it  makes  sin  origi- 
nant  in  each  human  soul  engendered  of  Adam. 
Whatever  according  to  the  Qth  Article  that  sin- 
ful trend  may  deserve,  Baptism  declares  that 
it  gets  grace.  And  as  Baptism  in  the  case  of 
infants  precedes  actual  trangression,  the  appli- 
cation of  this  sacrament  to  them  teaches  that 
God's  grace  goes  before  (prevents)  them  as 
well  as  follows  them,  anticipates  their  desire 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


as  well  as  responds  to  it,  is  meant  to  preserve 
from  transgression  as  well  as  to  remit  it  ;  in 
fine,  claims  all  children  as  God's  children  from 
the  start.  Thus  the  root  of  the  normal  religious 
life,  as  construed  by  Baptism,  is  consciousness 
of  life  as  a  vocation  of  God.  It  is  a  recogni- 
tion of  his  voice  calling  to  our  earliest  days, 
"Come  up  higher."  It  stands  for  the  spirit 
of  adoption  by  which  we  cry,  Abba,  Father. 
Hence  it  is  evident  that  children  are  brought 
to  Baptism  not  in  the  first  instance  to  make 
God  gracious  to  them,  but  because  he  is  gra- 
cious to  them.  The  Scripture  from  St.  Mark's 
Gospel  read  in  this  service  is  a  kind  of  apologia 
pro  gratia  sua;  a  vindication  of  this  service  of 
grace  by  reason  of  God's  disposition  of  grace; 
a  recognition  of  the  truth  that  "of  such  is  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,"  by  initiating  them  into 
that  Kingdom.  The  exhortation  following 
this  Scripture  points  out  :  "  Ye  perceive  how 
by  his  outward  gesture  and  deed  he  declared  his 
good  will  towards  them,"  —  and  declares  further 
that  we  perform  this  act  of  Baptism  because 
we  are  thus  "persuaded  of  the  good  will  of  our 
Heavenly  Father  towards  this  infant."  There 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


117 


could  not  be  a  stronger  attestation  of  what  men 
call  the  prevenient  grace  of  God  than  the  Bap- 
tismal Service  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 
And  this  means  that  Christian  ordinances  do 
not  create  the  grace  they  signify,  but  simply 
witness  to  it  and  apply  it.  They  too  are  the 
outcome  of  the  prevenient  grace  which  estab- 
lishes them  as  its  witnesses  and  agents.  They 
are  called  in  ecclesiastical  language  seals,  be- 
cause they  make  valid,  by  a  divinely  ordered 
act,  a  general  fact  in  a  particular  case.  So 
that,  whatever  Baptism  effects,  it  does  not  cre- 
ate the  gracious  disposition  of  God  towards 
the  recipient  of  it.  It  is  the  result  of  that 
disposition,  not  its  cause.  A  great  deal  of  stir 
was  once  made  in  New  York  by  the  assertion 
of  a  non-episcopal  divine  that  the  Baptismal 
Service  of  the  Episcopal  Church  taught  or  im- 
plied the  damnation  of  unbaptized  infants.  One 
should  rather  say  that  it  implied  the  impossi- 
bility of  the  damnation  of  any  infant.  For  it 
certifies  God's  gracious  disposition  to  all  man- 
kind; he  who  redeemed  all,  calling  each  one 
into  his  Kingdom.  Love  is  the  root  of  Baptism, 
not  wrath.  And  if  God  be  for  them,  who  can 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


be  against  them?  An  earthly  parent's  neglect 
will  certainly  not  abrogate  a  Heavenly  Fa- 
ther's disposition,  and  we  may  leave  all  these 
morally  immature  souls  securely  in  the  arms  of 
Him  who  declared,  long  years  before  a  single 
child  was  baptized,  "Of  such  is  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven." 

Lest  the  very  strong  and  repeated  expres- 
sions in  the  Holy  Scripture  concerning  the 
universal  obligation  of  Baptism,  and  its  neces- 
sity for  entrance  into  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
might  seem  to  militate  against  this  charitable 
view  concerning  unbaptized  infants,  involved 
in  the  Prayer  Book  service,  it  may  here  be  well 
to  remind  ourselves  that  such  Scriptural  ex- 
pressions apply  to  the  Baptism  of  the  conscious 
and  converted  subjects  of  it.  Our  own  service 
for  the  Baptism  of  adults,  after  quoting  our 
Lord's  words  to  Nicodemus,  proceeds  with  this 
exhortation  :  "  Whereby  ye  may  perceive  the 
great  necessity  of  this  sacrament  where  it  may 
be  had."  We  are  to  recognize  in  this  declara- 
tion of  Christ  to  the  ruler  who  came  under  the 
concealment  of  the  darkness  to  confer  with  him, 
as  well  as  in  the  exhortation  of  St.  Peter  to 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


119 


the  converted  on  the  day  of  Pentecost,  and  in 
other  strong  expressions  of  the  New  Testament, 
concerning  the  "answer  of  a  good  conscience 
towards  God"  in  Baptism,  allusion  to  the  duty 
of  the  confession  of  Christ  and  enrolment  under 
his  leadership,  as  well  as  of  belief  in  him  and 
subjective  trust  to  him.     The  birth  "of  water 
and  of  the  spirit  "  corresponds  to  the  affirmation 
of  St.  Paul,  "  With  the  heart  man  believeth  unto 
righteousness,  and  with  the  mouth  confession 
is  made  unto  salvation. "      Thus  the  Scriptural 
expressions   concerning    Baptism    involve   the 
subjective   as   well   as   the   objective  element 
in  it;    i.  e.  the  disposition  of  the  recipient  as 
well  as  the  force  of  the  act.     For  Baptism  as 
generally  treated    in  the  New   Testament   re- 
lates to  adult  converts  and  is  regarded  as  their 
admission   into  the  Christian    Church  on  the 
confession  and  acceptance  of  the  faith  of  the 
Church.      It   is   the  divinely  appointed   mode 
of   that  confession.      Therefore  the  Scriptural 
assertions  concerning  the  receiving  of  Baptism 
involve  the  aspect  of  it  as  a  confession,  as  the 
expression  of  a  moral  disposition  and   deter- 
mination on  the   part  of  the  baptized.      The 


I20  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

strong  utterances  of  our  Lord  on  the  necessity 
of  the  open  confession  of  his  name,  which  run 
through  all  his  teachings,  enter  as  an  element 
into  his  and  his  disciples'  utterances  on  the 
necessity  of  Baptism.  The  members  of  the 
Kingdom  must  be  born  of  the  spirit  inwardly, 
and  of  water,  involving  the  confession  of 
Christ,  outwardly.  They  must  be  joined  to  the 
Master  and  to  the  Brotherhood.  The  indica- 
tion of  this  confessional  element  of  Baptism  is 
found  in  the  Baptismal  Service  for  Infants  in 
the  Prayer  Book  in  the  answers  of  the  sponsors, 
which  promise  for  the  child  the  fulfilment  of 
that  confession  and  the  promise  of  obedience 
to  God's  holy  will  and  commandments. 

But  the  Baptism  of  infants  in  the  Prayer 
Book  speaks  of  it  as  a  new  birth  before  faith 
and  confession  are  possible.  Yes,  that  is  its 
great  privilege,  and  in  order  to  gather  its 
meaning  we  are  to  remember  what  birth  is. 
It  is  not  the  beginning  of  life.  Nothing  is 
born  which  is  not  already  living.  Birth  is  that 
critical  change  in  the  history  of  a  living  being 
which  ushers  it  into  the  sphere  where  alone 
its  life  can  meet  the  conditions  and  influences 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  J2i 

essential  to  the  full  development  of  its  latent 
powers.  The  Council  of  Ephesus,  in  giving  the 
Blessed  Virgin  the  much  misunderstood,  often 
mistranslated,  and  generally  abused  title  of 
theotokos  (^eord/co?),  meant  to  affirm  the  real- 
ity of  the  incarnation  in  the  pre-natal  as  well 
as  in  the  post-natal  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  was 
meant  to  assert  that  the  Divine  Word  was 
incarnate  before  Jesus  was  born  into  his 
Kingdom,  the  world.  And  in  analogy  to 
this,  Baptism,  as  new  birth  or  regeneration, 
stands  for  the  placing  in  its  proper  spiritual 
environment  of  the  being  already  redeemed  to 
God  in  Christ  Jesus.  It  does  not  involve  (as 
the  declaration  of  the  House  of  Bishops  in  1871 
pointed  out)  a  change  of  moral  character  in 
souls  as  yet  incapable  of  moral  action,  but  it 
involves  the  engrafting  of  the  already  redeemed 
life  into  the  body  of  Christ,  his  Church,  to 
which  the  promise  of  his  presence  and  of  his 
guidance  by  his  spirit  is  given;  all  which  is 
fitted  to  educe  normal  moral  character  from 
the  child's  first  conscious  breath.  Thus  the 
ideal  of  the  Christian  Life  according  to  the 
Baptismal  Service  of  the  Prayer  Book  is  nur- 


I22  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

ture,  not  conversion.  When  that  ideal  is  not 
attained,  conversion  comes  in  of  course,  and 
of  necessity.  But  the  normal  expectation  is 
avoidance  of  its  necessity,  at  least  in  that  criti- 
cal experience  of  it  which  reverses  the  whole 
trend  and  tone  of  the  moral  life,  which  has 
become  immoral  in  its  root.  Children  are  not 
to  be  converted  and  become  as  men,  but  men 
are  to  be  converted  to  become  as  little  children. 
Before,  however,  treating  of  that  nurture,  it 
may  be  well  to  remark  that  Baptism  by  intro- 
ducing the  redeemed  soul  into  the  family  of 
God  as  its  proper  spiritual  environment  (con- 
stituting it  a  very  member  incorporate  in  the 
mystical  body  of  God's  Son,  which  is  the 
blessed  company  of  all  faithful  people)  rejects 
that  individualistic  conception  of  Christian 
Life  which  makes  religion  merely  personal,  or 
exclusively  individual.  To  assert  that  religion 
is  simply  a  matter  between  God  and  the  soul,  is 
to  the  conception  of  the  Common  Prayer  a  par- 
tial truth.  Religion  is  essentially  a  matter 
between  God  and  the  soul,  but  it  is  not  only 
that.  It  involves  relationship  with  other  souls 
equally  the  recipients  of  God's  grace;  and  it 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


123 


finds  in  that  association  and  relationship,  and 
in  the  ordinances  which  express  it  and  bind 
it  together,  a  most  fruitful  means  of  develop- 
ing the  individual  Christian  life.  Baptism 
makes  the  normal  Christian  life  to  begin  in 
a  sense  of  companionship  and  relationship. 
As  the  infant  comes  to  consciousness,  it  is,  if 
he  be  rightly  instructed  as  to  his  baptismal 
privilege,  to  the  consciousness  of  membership 
in  a  sacred  community,  as  being  called  unto 
and  adopted  into  God's  family  of  which  Christ 
is  the  head.  By  the  divine  intention  and  pro- 
vision and  gracious  gift,  he  is  "  a  child  of  God, 
a  member  of  Christ,  and  an  inheritor  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven."  His  part  and  duty  is 
therefore  response,  the  response  of  his  own  con- 
sent; and  that  response  is  fostered,  stimulated, 
and  in  large  part  secured,  through  the  medi- 
ating ministry  of  the  church  of  which  he  finds 
himself  a  member,  its  instructions,  its  prayers, 
and  its  sacraments  made  alive  by  the  Holy  Spirit 
of  God.  His  spiritual  life  is  thus  not  wholly 
introspective,  but  is,  so  to  speak,  circumspec- 
tive. It  involves  the  sense  of  brotherhood  and, 
as  one  of  that  brotherhood,  of  loyalty  to  Christ, 


124 


THE  PRA  YER  BOOK  AND 


just  as  inevitably  as  citizenship  in  the  State 
involves  the  recognition  of  fellow  citizens  and 
the  sharing  of  a  common  patriotism  binding 
all  to  one  country.  Christian  nurture,  there- 
fore, which  infant  Baptism  involves,  is  not 
based  solely  on  the  idea  of  an  isolated  indi- 
vidual experience,  but  on  the  conception  of 
participation  in  a  family  life. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE   LESSON   OF  CONFIRMATION   FOR  THE 
CHRISTIAN   LIFE 

TN  the  order  of  the  Church's  discipine  be- 
-*-  tween  the  two  sacraments,  Baptism  and 
the  Lord's  Supper,  the  Rite  of  Confirmation 
comes  in.  None  of  the  Church's  children,  for 
whose  nurture  she  is  responsible,  are  to  be 
admitted  to  the  Holy  Communion  "until  such 
time  as  they  be  confirmed  or  are  ready  and  de- 
sirous to  be  confirmed,"  and  the  minister  is 
"earnestly  to  move  the  Persons  confirmed  to 
come  without  delay  to  the  Lord's  Supper." 

The  light  which  Confirmation  thus  throws 
upon  the  Christian  life  is  significant.  It  is, 
in  itself,  the  official  recognition  and  culmina- 
tion of  that  Christian  nurture  which  the  spon- 
sors in  Baptism  are  pledged  to  secure  to  the 
baptized  child.  It  emphasizes  the  subjective 
or  confessional  side  of  Baptism,  while  it  is 
significant  in  the  method  of  its  administration 


126  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

of  the  great  truth  to  which  Baptism  bears  wit- 
ness, that  salvation  comes  not  primarily  of 
one's  native  resolution  nor  of  the  Christian 
knowledge  and  instruction  one  may  have  re- 
ceived, but  of  God's  favor  and  goodness  in 
the  bestowal  of  the  grace  of  his  Holy  Spirit. 
For  Confirmation  is  "ministered,"  and  that  by 
the  Chief  Pastor  of  the  flock,  to  "signify  by 
the  laying  on  of  his  hands,  after  the  example 
of  the  holy  Apostle,  God's  favor  and  gracious 
goodness  towards  them."  But  the  essential 
preliminary  of  this  Episcopal  act  is  that  "  with 
their  own  mouth  and  consent  openly  before  the 
church  they  ratify  and  confirm"  what  was  prom- 
ised for  them  in  Baptism.  That  is,  the  bap- 
tized are  both  to  confirm  and  to  be  confirmed. 
They  are  not  to  be  confirmed  until  they  con- 
firm, until  they,  "having  come  to  the  years  of 
discretion,"  have  been  thoroughly  instructed  in 
the  Creed,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments, and  in  the  Catechism's  exposition 
of  the  same,  that  they  may  be  able  intelli- 
gently to  "ratify  and  confirm"  the  promises 
made  for  them  in  baptism,  and  "promise  that 
by  the  grace  of  God  they  will  evermore  en- 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


127 


deavor  themselves  faithfully  to  observe  such 
things  as  they,  by  their  own  confession,  have 
assented  unto." 

Confirmation  therefore,  as  the  act  of  the  con- 
firmed, bears  witness  that  there  must  be  sub- 
jective assent  and  response  to  the  objective 
grace  of  God,  witnessed  to  and  sealed  in  Bap- 
tism, in  order  that  that  grace  may  prove  effect- 
ual. And,  as  the  church's  act  by  the  Bishop, 
it  also  bears  witness  that  Confirmation  is  not 
only  an  assumption  of  responsibility  on  man's 
part,  but  that  it  is  also  an  assurance  of  grace 
on  God's  part,  who  promises,  as  the  laying 
on  of  the  hands  of  the  Bishop  signifies,  to 
"strengthen  them  with  the  Holy  Ghost." 
Confirmation  thus  witnesses  to  both  the  duty 
and  the  privilege  of  the  Christian  life.  It 
teaches  that  no  effort  of  man  to  meet  his  re- 
sponsibility but  meets  the  responsive  grace  of 
God  to  enable  him  to  accomplish  it.  While 
it  marks  the  Christian  life  as  sober,  it  makes 
it  anything  but  sombre.  It  emphasizes  its 
dignity  as  an  intelligent  service  of  God,  which 
it  characterizes  as  our  bounden  duty.  It  in- 
tensifies as  well  its  exaltation  and  joy,  in  its 


I28  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

i  ~" 

recognition  that  God  "worketh  in  us  both  to 
will  and  to  do  of  his  good  pleasure,"  which 
constitutes  its  unspeakable  privilege. 

As  so  much  in  Confirmation  and  the  Chris- 
tian life  depends  upon  Christian  nurture,  in 
order  to  understand  the  Prayer  Book's  con- 
ception of  that  life  we  must  scrutinize  the  sub- 
stance of  the  nurture  unfolded  in  its  pages. 
Now  if  we  look  not  only  at  the  responses  and 
pledges  of  the  sponsors  in  Baptism  as  indicat- 
ing the  demand  and  expectation  of  the  Church 
in  regard  to  the  child  which  it  receives,  but  also 
at  the  general  tone  of  the  services  which  it 
provides  for  its  nutriment  of  worship,  it  be- 
comes evident  that  emphasis  is  laid  in  the  Com- 
mon Prayer  chiefly  on  "life  as  a  blending  of 
piety  and  morals  " ;  piety,  or  the  love  of  God, 
being  the  inspiring  motive,  and  morality,  or 
obedience  to  his  will,  being  its  indispensable 
manifestation.  In  the  Catechism  the  Apostles' 
Creed  (in  its  exhibition  of  God  the  Father,  who 
made  me,  of  God  the  Son,  who  redeemed  me, 
of  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  who  sanctifieth  me)  is 
given  as  the  inspiration  of  a  life  for  God  and  in 
God.  And  God's  holy  will  and  commandments 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


129 


furnish  the  rule  by  which  that  inspiration  is 
to  guide  the  life.  The  stress  is  laid,  not  on 
emotion,  but  on  the  fulfilment  of  life's  duties. 
The  faith  enjoined  is  not  exhausted  in  notitia, 
perception  of  the  truth,  or  assensus,  acquies- 
cence in  the  truth,  but  only  in  fiducia,  trust 
to  the  truth.  A  "faith  which  works  by  love" 
is  its  command  and  demand. 

In  the  Collects  of  the  daily  services  the  bap- 
tized is  taught  to  pray  that  he  may  "  so  hear 
God's  word,"  not  only  that  he  may  understand 
it,  but  "that  it  may  bring  forth  in  him  the 
fruit  of  good  living " ;  that  he  may  so  receive 
God's  guidance  that  "all  his  works  may  be 
begun,  continued,  and  ended  in  him,"  that  he 
may  be  so  purified  that  he  "may  love  the 
things  which  God  commandeth" ;  that  he  may 
be  so  enlightened  that  he  "may  perceive  and 
know  what  things  he  ought  to  do,  and  have 
grace  and  power  faithfully  to  fulfil  the  same. " 
"A  life  of  love  fulfilling  the  law,"  that  is 
the  undertone  of  the  whole  Book  of  Common 
Prayer.  It  is  not  a  life  of  ecstasy,  nor  simply 
of  orthodox  acceptance  of  a  creed,  but  a  life  of 
obedience,  and  its  end  is  character;  the  Di- 

9 


I30 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


vine  will  interpenetrating  and  incorporating 
itself  in  the  human  will.  One  is  to  so  "thank- 
fully receive  Christ's  inestimable  benefit  of  re- 
demption as  to  daily  endeavor  himself  to  fol- 
low the  blessed  steps  of  his  most  holy  life." 
That  is  the  end  and  aim  of  the  Christian  nurture 
of  the  Prayer  Book.  As  Dr.  McConnell,  in  his 
stimulating  History  of  the  Episcopal  Church, 
has  well  said:  "Its  purpose  is  to  produce 
and  conserve  goodness.  Its  dominant  tone  is 
ethical  rather  than  intellectual  or  emotional. 
It  has  often  been  taunted  with  '  lack  of  vital 
piety,'  with  worldliness,  with  cold  morality. 
Dogmatists  and  emotionalists  from  within  have 
attempted  to  transform  her  genius,  but  have 
not  succeeded.  The  abiding  instinct  has  kept 
her  steadfast  to  her  conception  of  the  church 
as  an  Institute  of  Righteousness.  This  has 
determined  her  position  towards  doctrine,  dis- 
cipline, and  worship,  and  fixed  her  conditions 
of  membership  and  intercommunion.  Her 
great  test  of  the  truth  and  value  of  doctrine  is 
its  immediate  effect  upon  living.  .  .  .  Her  lit- 
urgy is  valued  and  insisted  upon,  not  chiefly  for 
its  beauty  or  antiquity,  or  its  fitness  to  express 


THE   CHRISTIAN'  LIFE 


exalted  emotions,  but  because  of  its  discipli- 
nary power  to  uphold  the  soul  in  right  living. 
.  .  .  The  only  condition  on  which  she  will 
turn  the  key  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  to 
bind  or  loose  is  an  ethical  condition.  She 
bids  to  the  Holy  Sacrament  all  those  who  '  do 
truly  and  earnestly  repent  them  of  their  sins, 
and  are  in  love  and  charity  with  their  neigh- 
bors, and  intend  to  lead  a  new  life  walking  in 
the  commandments  of  God. ' ' 

While  then  the  Christian  life  (according 
to  the  Prayer  Book)  is  normally  and  pri- 
marily a  life  of  righteousness,  of  character 
imbued  with  the  spirit  and  mind  of  Christ, 
the  services  to  which  the  baptized  is  intro- 
duced emancipate  his  conception  of  religion 
from  the  limitations  of  an  isolated  individual- 
ism, i.  e.  from  regarding  it  simply  as  a  personal 
concern.  It  comes  to  him  in  the  form  of  a 
communal  life.  As  a  type  of  such  service  we 
need  look  only  at  the  Litany,  whose  compre- 
hensiveness of  thought  is  unmatched  save  by 
the  beauty  of  its  diction.  Its  deprecations 
are  very  searching  indeed  regarding  individual 
character  and  personal  responsibility  both  tern- 


132 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


poral  and  eternal.  Evil,  mischief,  sin,  blind- 
ness of  heart,  pride,  vainglory,  hypocrisy, 
envy,  hatred,  malice,  all  uncharitableness,  in- 
ordinate affections,  deceits  of  world,  flesh,  and 
devil,  hardness  of  heart,  contempt  of  God's 
word  and  commandment,  —  from  all  these  per- 
sonal perversions  of  character,  the  reiterated 
response  goes  up,  "  Good  Lord  deliver  us ! " 
deliver  us  amid  all  life's  joys  and  tribulations, 
in  death's  dark  hour,  and  in  the  judgment  day. 
But  in  the  supplications  we  pass  into  a  not  less 
sacred,  yet  into  a  wider  realm.  The  whole 
church  emerges  as  the  object  of  our  care;  the 
State  with  its  rulers  and  magistrates,  all  the 
representatives  of  Christ's  ministry,  and  all 
looking  forward  to  that  ministry,  that  they  may 
be  laborers  and  not  drones;  all  people,  all  na- 
tions, a  universal  peace  on  sea  and  land,  all 
the  erring,  all  the  deceived,  the  strong,  the 
weak,  the  fallen,  travellers  on  land  and  sea, 
the  sick,  the  young,  the  imprisoned,  orphans 
and  widows,  and  the  desolate  and  oppressed, 
and  many  more;  all  enter  within  the  scope  of 
supplication,  and  all  thus  become  the  objects 
of  solicitous  regard  and  aid.  The  horizon  of 


THE    CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


133 


religion  is  made  coextensive  with  the  horizon 
of  life;  and  all  life  of  the  state  and  of  society, 
as  of  the  church,  is  regarded  as  a  service  of 
God.  It  is  to  be  fashioned  into  a  department 
of  his  kingdom,  by  infilling  it  with  the  Chris- 
tian temper  and  the  religious  character.  As 
soon  then  as  one  finds  his  true  life  he  is  led 
out  beyond  it,  loses  it,  as  it  were,  to  find  it 
multiplied  and  enlarged  in  other  lives  which  it 
is  to  stimulate,  and  to  which  it  is  to  minister. 
The  whole  tone  of  the  Litany,  as  of  the  other 
offices  of  devotion  in  which  the  child  is  led  in 
worship,  is  altruistic;  altruistic  not  in  that 
bald  and  excessive  sense  which  stigmatizes  the 
saving  of  one's  own  soul  as  selfish,  and  pro- 
claims devotion  to  the  souls  of  others  the  only 
true  Christian  devotion ;  but  in  the  sense  that 
the  value  of  one's  own  soul  (which  according 
to  the  Master  outweighs  and  outmeasures  the 
whole  terrestrial  creation)  is  made  the  standard 
of  the  value  of  other  souls,  which  are  to  be 
loved  and  treasured  as  one's  own.  To  seek  to 
save  one's  own  soul  is  the  least  selfish  of  acts, 
if  one  catches  the  meaning  of  what  its  salva- 
tion is.  That  is  surrender  of  the  soul  to  God. 


134 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


It  is  the  saying,  I  will  not  live  by  myself,  or  for 
myself.  I  will  live  to  him  who  loved  me  and 
gave  himself  for  me.  Such  care  is  a  first  duty, 
and  a  transcendent  duty.  It  is  the  only  worthy 
return  to  God  who  gave  the  life  to  give  it  back 
to  him  to  fashion  and  direct.  But  in  its  sur- 
render to  its  Father  is  involved  the  surrender 
to  the  brotherhood  as  well.  Living  to  him 
who  loved  me  and  gave  himself  for  me,  is  to 
live  also  to  these  whom  he  loved,  and  for  whom 
he  gave  and  gives  himself  too.  This  is  the 
true  Gospel  altruism,  to  love  one's  neighbor  as 
one's  self.  There  is  a  true  self-consideration. 
It  is  one  which  does  not  end  in  self-considera- 
tion, but  will  consider  all  souls  as  members  of 
one  body. 

The  Christian  life  then  which  is  regarded, 
as  Baptism  regards  it,  as  a  vocation  of  God,  is 
one  suffused  with  human  sympathy  and  inter- 
penetrated with  mutual  helpfulness.  It  will 
have  none  of  that  impassive  cynicism  which, 
declaring  the  laws  of  society  inexorable,  leaves 
those  laws  to  work  out  their  result  unalleviated 
by  human  kindness,  and  declares  that  the  re- 
sult, exact  and  unerring  though  pitiless,  is 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


the  only  true  benevolence,  because  the  only 
benevolence  of  law.  But  religion  recognizes  a 
higher  social  law  than  the  clashing  and  clang- 
ing of  an  impersonal  social  machinery.  Per- 
sonal character  and  destiny  can  never,  according 
to  the  Christian  faith,  be  wrought  out  by  im- 
personal forces.  Its  moving  power  is  not  me- 
chanic but  dynamic.  Spiritual  influences  alone 
are  competent  to  evolve  spiritual  character. 
The  building  up  of  man,  not  as  the  supreme 
animal,  but  as  a  moral  being  whose  self-deter- 
mination constitutes  him  a  spiritual  character, 
must  involve  spiritual  appeal  to  that  self-deter- 
mination. And  that  spiritual  appeal  is  not 
only  to  the  law  of  conscience,  though  it  is  that 
primarily,  but  is  also  the  appeal  of  sympathy 
which  is  the  law  of  life;  the  appeal  of  sympa- 
thy through  helpfulness  and  sacrifice.  There 
is  a  struggle  for  existence  and  a  survival  of  the 
fittest  in  the  moral  as  in  the  physical  world, 
but  that  struggle  is  in  its  own  atmosphere  and 
on  its  own  plane.  The  realm  of  this  moral 
struggle  is  one  where  personal  interest  and 
heartfelt  sympathy,  and  the  helpfulness  of  the 
hands  which  manifest  and  impart  them,  are 


!36  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

strong  factors  in  the  achievement.  A  politi- 
cal economy  which  leaves  these  out  and  re- 
gards them  as  mischievous  intermeddling  with 
a  natural  order  which  they  disturb,  but  cannot 
destroy,  is  one  which  fails  to  recognize  the 
spiritual  side  of  life,  which  is  its  determining 
side.  It  is  a  Gradgrind  theory  which  impris- 
ons man  within  the  bars  of  a  terrestrial  cage, 
instead  of  stimulating  his  flight  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  spiritual  realities.  But  life  as  a  voca- 
tion of  God,  as  Baptism  declares  it  to  be,  is 
life  in  the  realm  of  spiritual  realities. 

The  spiritual  altruism  of  the  Christian  nur- 
ture ministered  in  the  Prayer  Book  has  been 
a  strong  stimulus  to  the  great  humanitarian 
movement  of  modern  times,  which,  though  pass- 
ing far  beyond  the  ken  of  these  ancient  formu- 
laries, is  yet  a  legitimate  development  of  them. 
Their  spirit  of  sympathy  and  helpfulness  finds 
not  a  new  home,  but  only  a  larger  habitation,  in 
Miese  modern  movements.  These  express  in 
wiser  and  ampler  form  the  old  regard  of  the 
Litany  for  the  imprisoned,  the  desolate,  and 
the  oppressed.  Prison  reform,  tenement  house 
reform,  sanitation,  societies  for  preventing 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


137 


cruelty  to  children  and  animals,  homes  for  the 
rescue  of  the  unfortunate,  hospitals,  reforma- 
tories, the  thousand  and  one  methods  of  bring- 
ing large  relief  to  human  misfortune  in  modern 
days,  are  simply  enlarged  and  riper  illustrations 
of  the  spirit  which  of  old  time  offered  in  the 
Litany  its  petitions  for  the  evils  they  mitigate. 
Of  course,  there  are  great  abuses  possible  on 
this  helpful  side  of  life.  Alms  may  impover- 
ish as  well  as  help.  Feeling  is  not  always 
judicious,  and  there  may  be  a  false  charity, 
which  is  like  a  spendthrift  who  is  lavish  in 
generosity,  while  he  fails  to  pay  his  debts. 
But  a  mythical  Micawber  does  not  discredit  a 
real  Shaftesbury,  and  the  Borrioboola  Gha  of 
the  satirist  does  not  lessen  the  power  of  the 
lives  of  Martyn  and  Hannington  and  Pattison 
in  the  actual  course  of  the  world.  If  the  lar- 
gess of  others  always  pauperized,  we  must  be 
all  of  us  living  in  the  poorhouse.  For  what 
have  we  that  we  have  not  received?  The  Fa- 
thers labored,  and  we  are  entered  into  their 
labors.  No  graduate  of  a  college  pays  half 
the  cost  of  his  education.  The  benefactions 
of  founders  and  endowers  put  him  lastingly 


138  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

in  their  debt.  The  glories  of  architecture  and 
literature  and  art  are  ours,  as  the  free  gift  of 
former  generations.  Generosity  may  sometimes 
relax  the  muscles  of  exertion,  but  indifferent 
avarice  chills  the  life  blood.  Humanity  can 
never  rise  to  its  ideal  and  normal  life  save 
as  it  recognizes  life's  divine  vocation,  and  its 
consequent  ministries  of  sympathy  and  help- 
fulness ;  and  this  is  the  teaching  of  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE  LORD'S   SUPPER  IN  ITS   BEARING  ON 
THE  CHRISTIAN   LIFE 

A  LIFE  so  noble  in  its  inspiration,  and 
•**•  so  wide  in  its  scope  of  gracious  ministra- 
tion, as  we  have  seen  Baptism  and  its  corre- 
lated nurture  imply,  must  surely  require  a  vast 
increment  of  strength.  Amid  a  world  of  temp- 
tation and  with  the  inherent  trend  to  self-in- 
dulgence, where  self-gratification  is  easy  and 
duty  often  looms  before  us  as  the 

"  Stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God," 

is  there  nothing  in  the  church  which  stands 
for  divine  strength,  as  well  as  for  a  divine 
vocation  ? 

We  turn  to  consider  this  element  of  the  nor- 
mal Christian  life  as  taught  and  embodied  in 
the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  For  this 
great  sacrament  stands,  to  every  point  of  view 
from  which  men  look  at  it,  for  the  divine  nutri- 


140 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


ment  of  the  Christian  life.  Its  very  outward 
gesture  and  deed  presuppose  the  impossibility 
of  retaining  and  developing  spiritual  strength 
without  heavenly  food,  as  really  as  the  impos- 
sibility of  maintaining  natural  life  without 
physical  food.  And  that  heavenly  food  it  sets 
forth  as  no  less  than  the  very  life  of  the  re- 
deeming Master  imparted  unto  us.  This  sac- 
rament is  the  strongest  possible  witness  to  the 
high  and  divine  nature  of  man's  spiritual  life, 
in  that  it  declares  both  that  man  is  capable  of 
sharing  that  life  and  that  his  life  is  abnormal 
and  stunted  and  unnatural  (by  the  standard  of 
his  true  nature)  if  he  do  not  share  it.  It  in- 
dicates the  reasonableness,  while  it  does  not 
detract  from  the  grace,  of  that  great  redemp- 
tion by  the  cross  which  it  celebrates,  in  that, 
while  it  sets  forth  its  imperative  necessity,  it 
reveals  how  splendidly  worth  saving  that  man- 
hood is  which  is  thus  capable  of  receiving  so 
divine  a  guest,  and  which  lives  its  only  true 
life  in  his  blest  companionship.  For  with- 
out entering  into  the  sphere  of  controversy 
concerning  the  method  and  measure  of  this 
sacrament,  the  simple  contemplation  of  its 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


141 


essential  features  shows  the  vivid  relation  in 
which  it  brings  man's  spiritual  life  to  the  life 
whose  sacrifice  of  itself  it  celebrates.  On  its 
divine  side  this  service  is  rooted  in  the  great 
objective  fact  of  Christ's  sacrificial  death  for 
man;  on  man's  side,  in  that  devout  remem- 
brance of  it  which  is  a  participation  in  it :  "  Do 
this  in  remembrance  of  me.  Take,  eat,  drink 
ye  all  of  this."  Thus  the  Master,  and  so  the 
Apostle:  "As  often  as  ye  eat  this  bread  and 
drink  this  cup  ye  do  show  the  Lord's  death  till 
he  come.  The  cup  of  blessing  which  we  bless, 
is  it  not  the  communion  of  the  blood  of  Christ  ? 
The  bread  which  we  break,  is  it  not  the  com- 
munion of  the  body  of  Christ?  " 

By  rejecting  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantia- 
tion,  our  church  has  removed  the  words  of  con- 
secration from  the  realm  of  the  literal  and 
physical  to  that  of  the  spiritual  and  vital.  In 
affirming  that  transubstantiation  is  not  only  an 
imperfect  but  a  false  doctrine,  one  not  simply 
obscuring,  but  overthrowing  the  nature  of  a 
sacrament,  it  has  followed  our  Lord's  own  com- 
mentary on  his  words  concerning  eating  his 
flesh  and  drinking  his  blood.  Great  and  essen- 


142 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


tial  as  is  the  truth  conveyed  by  those  asserting 
words,  our  Lord  declared  they  were  to  be  taken 
spiritually,  not  physically. 

To  his  wondering  and  perplexed  disciples, 
startled  by  his  strong  declaration,  "  Except  ye 
eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man  and  drink  his 
blood,  ye  have  no  life  in  you,"  he  answered, 
"Doth  this  offend  you?  ...  It  is  the  Spirit 
that  quickeneth;  the  flesh  profiteth  nothing: 
the  words  that  I  speak  unto  you,  they  are  spirit 
and  they  are  life. "  This  exposition  of  his  words 
by  the  Master  himself  gives  the  sense  in  which 
the  Communion  Service  of  the  Prayer  Book  re- 
ceives and  utters  them.  The  Ritual  uses  freely 
the  Lord's  language,  but  always  in  consonance 
with  his  spiritual  explanation  of  it.  According 
to  this  the  words  of  Consecration  embody  and 
declare  the  great  spiritual  truth,  the  basis  of 
all  true  Christian  life,  that  Christ's  followers 
must  live  in  him  by  his  living  in  them.  They 
lift  the  sacrament  and  the  soul  which  celebrates 
it  into  the  atmosphere  and  power  of  the  Lord's 
presence.  They  do  not  indeed  imply  or  prom- 
ise a  material  manifestation  or  impartation  of 
him.  His  presence  in  the  flesh  he  had  himself 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


declared  it  was  expedient  should  be  removed, 
that  his  presence  by  the  Spirit  might  be  the 
more  real  and  effectual  in  his  followers.  But 
the  word  and  action  of  the  Sacrament  both  in- 
dicate and  guarantee  that  inward  spiritual  par- 
ticipation in  his  life  and  nature  which  is  the 
essential  source  of  spiritual  life.  "  I  in  them 
and  they  in  me, "  the  service  is  ever  saying  as 
we  receive  the  consecrated  bread  and  wine,  the 
sacred  symbols  of  his  body  and  his  blood :  the 
outward  and  visible  sign  lifting  us  into  the  re- 
gion of  the  invisible  and  eternal  reality. 

The  sacrament  on  man's  part  is  "the  memo- 
rial which  Christ  hath  commanded  us  to  make." 
This  remembrance  of  him  in  his  death  and  pas- 
sion is  the  subjective  condition  of  receiving 
within  us  that  life  which  he  alone  possesses 
and  can  alone  impart.  That  life,  the  life  which 
he  laid  down  for  us,  he  vouchsafes  to  give  to 
hearts  made  ready  to  receive  him  by  obeying 
his  command,  "Do  this  in  remembrance  of 
me."  To  them  he  fulfils  the  gracious  prom- 
ise, "  He  that  cometh  to  me  shall  never  hunger, 
and  he  that  believeth  on  me  shall  never  thirst." 
To  this  act  of  obedient  and  grateful  love  he 


144 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


responds  by  the  fulfilment  of  the  wondrous 
word,  uttered  in  the  hour  of  the  institution  of 
this  sacrament,  "  If  any  man  love  me  he  will 
keep  my  word,  and  my  Father  will  love  him, 
and  we  will  come  and  make  our  abode  with 
him." 

This  rooted  remembrance,  which  is  the  ele- 
ment which  man  contributes  to  a  real  commun- 
ion, is  one  of  the  deepest  mysteries,  while  it  is 
one  of  the  most  assured  realities  of  man's  spir- 
itual nature.  The  fact  of  memory  is  one  which 
attests  the  continuity  of  man's  being,  and  shat- 
ters the  senseless  theory  that  he  is  a  mere 
succession  of  sensations  with  no  enduring  per- 
sonality in  which  they  inhere.  The  power  of 
the  recall  of  the  past  so  as  to  make  it  the  influ- 
ence of  the  present,  is  the  indubitable  testi- 
mony to  the  reality  and  the  real  continuity  of 
that  past  and  present.  Memory,  thus  testify- 
ing to  personality,  becomes  the  purveyor,  of 
spiritual  forces  and  influences.  It  is  the  per- 
sonality enriching  its  present  life  with  the 
treasures  stored  up  by  its  past  experiences, 
making  of  these  past  experiences  not  dead 
relics  of  a  vanished  life,  but  principalities  and 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


'45 


powers  of  the  life  that  now  is  and  is  to  come. 
To  this  great  spiritual  faculty  of  man,  Christ 
appeals  when  he  would  make  his  life  and 
sacrifice  living  realities  of  man's  spiritual 
experience. 

This  remembrance  in  the  Sacrament  of  the 
body  and  blood  of  Christ  is,  as  set  forth  in  the 
communion  service,  threefold.  It  is  first  of 
all  individual,  a  remembrance  in  the  mind  of 
the  believer.  He  calls  to  remembrance  what 
Christ  is  to  him  through  the  gift  of  that  life 
and  death  for  him.  He  communes  with  him 
in  his  heart,  and  his  presence  is  very  real.  But 
not  only  individually  and  in  the  secret  recesses 
of  his  being  is  this  remembrance  held.  It  is 
a  remembrance  in  and  with  the  community  of 
the  faithful  ;  a  common  remembrance,  there- 
fore a  remembrance  which  is  a  celebration,  or 
common  participation  in  the  remembrance ;  the 
commemoration  of  the  church  which  is  the 
blessed  company  of  all  faithful  people.  "We 
do  celebrate,"  as  the  phrase  in  the  Oblation 
asserts.  As  in  the  lower  yet  still  sacred  circle 
of  the  family  not  only  the  individual  child  re- 
members and  hallows  the  mother's  birthday,  but 


146  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

all  the  children  together  celebrate  it,  and  thus 
add  to  the  power  of  the  personal  remembrance 
by  the  common  family  participation;  as  in  the 
divinely  ordered  state  the  patriot  not  only  re- 
calls the  national  anniversary,  but  celebrates  it 
with  his  fellow  citizens,  enhancing  and  deepen- 
ing his  individual  allegiance  by  participation 
in  the  common  patriotism ;  so  in  this  far  more 
sacred  family,  in  this  high  and  holy  nation, 
the  great  underlying  fact  of  its  redemption 
comes  in  power  through  a  common  remem- 
brance of  it,  of  which  this  holy  sacrament 
is  a  celebration.  And  then  the  third  element 
of  the  remembrance  enters.  We  not  only 
remember  in  our  hearts,  and  remember  with 
others  in  the  common  celebration,  but  we 
remember  before  God ;  "  we  celebrate  and  make 
here  before  thy  Divine  Majesty  the  memorial 
thy  Son  hath  commanded  us  to  make. "  So  the 
word  proceeds.  The  earthly  service  begun  in 
the  silent  chamber  of  the  heart  ends  by  usher- 
ing us  into  the  court  of  heaven.  And  we  make 
the  memorial  there,  not  indeed  to  remind  the 
Father  of  that  eternal  fact,  deep  down  in  his 
own  eternal  being,  of  the  "  Lamb  slain  from 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


147 


the  foundation  of  the  world,"  which  is  as 
eternally  present  to  his  mind  as  it  is  eter- 
nally present  in  his  heart,  but  to  declare  our 
remembrance  of  it  as  the  ground  of  our  ap- 
proach and  as  the  plea  for  our  participation 
in  the  grace  here  set  forth.  With  the  divinely 
ordered  sacramental  symbols  of  that  dying  love, 
we  represent  before  the  Father  that  all-suffi- 
cient sacrifice  whose  merit  we  now  plead  in 
act,  as  we  plead  it  in  word,  in  every  prayer  we 
utter  for  Christ's  sake,  our  hearts  attuned  to 
the  strain  so  nobly  rendered  by  Canon  Bright 
in  his  communion  hymn : 

"  And  now,  O  Father,  mindful  of  the  love 
Which  bought  us,  once  for  all,  on  Calvary's  tree, 
And  having  with  us  him  who  pleads  above, 
We  here  present,  we  here  set  forth  to  thee 
That  only  offering  perfect  in  thine  eyes, 
That  one  true,  pure,  immortal  sacrifice." 

And  thus  the  memorial  of  that  one  great  and 
sufficient  sacrifice  becomes  on  our  part  a  spirit- 
ual sacrifice,  a  sacrifice  of  praise  and  thanks- 
giving for  its  love  and  benefit,  of  intercession 
for  its  grace  and  merit,  and  of  surrender  in  its 
spirit  and  through  its  power  of  ourselves,  "  our 
souls  and  bodies,  to  be  a  reasonable,  holy,  and 


148  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

living  sacrifice"  unto  him,  which  is,  though  we 
are  unworthy  to  offer  any  sacrifice,  our  bounden 
duty  and  service. 

I  have  striven  briefly  to  condense  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  the  service  of  the  Holy  Com- 
munion into  such  statement  as  seems  to  me  to 
be  the  clear  indication  and  meaning  of  our  rit- 
ual, in  order  to  indicate  more  clearly  the  nor- 
mal Christian  life  to  which  it  bears  witness. 
The  whole  service  is  one  common  to  priest 
and  people,  not  something  done  by  one  for  the 
other,  but  all  remembering,  all  celebrating,  all 
communicating,  and  all  offering  the  spiritual 
sacrifices  of  love  and  praise  and  prayer  and 
consecration,  though  one  be  officially  set  as 
the  priestly  mouthpiece  of  the  priestly  people. 
The  appeal  of  this  sacrament  is  to  the  life  of 
every  one,  and  its  assertion  is  positive  of  a  life 
of  God  in  man  to-day,  through  the  faith  which 
is  in  Christ  Jesus,  who  loved  us  and  gave  him- 
self for  us.  For  nothing  testifies  to  the  object 
and  the  nature  of  the  Christian's  faith  by  which 
he  lives  more  than  this  service,  which  speaks 
of  Christ's  real  presence  as  the  very  food  of 
the  soul.  The  faith  which  is  the  root  of  the 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


149 


normal  Christian  life  is  not  primarily  a  faith 
in  statement,  but  in  fact.  It  does  not  rest 
ultimately  in  dogma,  or  description,  but  in  him 
whom  the  dogma  portrays  in  some  element  of 
his  being  or  function  of  his  office.  It  is  not 
the  believing  about  him,  but  the  trusting  in 
him.  The  dogma,  like  the  law,  may  be  the 
schoolmaster,  but  its  office  and  use  are  to  lead 
to  Christ. 

Neither  does  faith,  as  set  forth  in  the 
Eucharist,  rest  in  the  Church,  the  body  of 
Christ,  for  it  looks  beyond  the  body  to  the 
spirit  of  the  Lord,  which,  if  it  do  not  share,  it 
is  (as  the  Apostle  says)  none  of  his.  As  his 
body  and  his  bride  the  Church  is  very  sacred, 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  ministers,  as  it  was  in- 
tended to  minister  if  rightly  used,  very  poten- 
tially to  the  life  of  the  spirit.  But  it  is  not 
the  termimis  ad  quern  of  the  Christian  life.  If 
true  to  itself,  it  points  beyond  itself.  Behold, 
it  cries  not  me,  but  "Behold  the  Lamb  of 
God,  who  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world." 
Both  dogma,  the  mind  of  the  church,  and  ritual, 
its  discipline,  are  to  the  one  great  end,  "  Christ 
formed  within  you."  They  are  like  the  tele- 


THE   PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


scope  and  spectroscope  in  relation  to  the  heav- 
enly bodies.  They  are  not  primarily  to  be 
looked  at,  (though  their  correct  construction 
and  accurate  preservation  are  most  important 
factors  in  their  use,)  but  they  are  chiefly  to 
be  looked  through.  It  is  the  heavenly  vision 
they  disclose  to  which  we  are  to  be  obedi- 
ent. The  great  value  and  function  of  the 
Church  is  not  to  monopolize  attention,  but 
to  bring  the  soul  face  to  face  with  Him  whose 
Church  it  is. 

The  faith  thus  portrayed  as  essential  by  the 
sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  is  a  living 
faith  in  a  living  Lord.  The  life  to  which  it 
points  is  a  life  which  "  stands  fast  in  the  lib- 
erty wherewith  Christ  hath  made  us  free,"  a 
life  which  because  of  that  liberty  finds  a  neces- 
sity laid  upon  it,  the  necessity  of  grateful  love, 
to  consecrate  itself  Christ's  faithful  soldier  and 
servant  unto  its  life's  end. 

Is  not  this,  it  may  be  asked,  an  ideal  of  life 
overwrought,  overstrained,  of  necessity  remote 
from  life's  rough  tasks  and  common  companion- 
ships; a  life  unlike  that  which  is  indicated 
in  Baptism  as  a  divine  vocation  to  contend 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


with  the  sins  and  cruelties,  neglects  and  injus- 
tices, of  the  world;  the  life  of  encounter,  for 
guidance  and  safe  conduct  in  which  we  pray 
in  the  Litany  and  all  the  Prayer  Book  services  ? 
But  the  answer  is,  "a  life  remote  only  in  its 
source."  And  the  very  source  from  which 
the  life  springs  points  not  to  seclusion  and 
quiet  ecstasy,  but  to  vigorous  and  manly  en- 
deavor, to  a  life  masterful  in  its  conquests 
as  virile  in  its  undertakings.  "  By  thy  Bap- 
tism, Fasting,  and  Temptation.  By  thine 
Agony  and  Bloody  Sweat."  The  divine 
strength  manifest  in  these  stern  experiences 
is  the  strength  sought  and  found  in  Christ, 
and  sought  and  found  for  like  conflict  and 
like  victory. 

And  thus  through  its  sacraments,  as  through 
all  its  offices,  the  Prayer  Book  indicates  the 
nature  of  the  normal  Christian  life.  It  is  a  life 
of  Divine  vocation,  of  Divine  companionship,  of 
manly  development  in  virtue  and  knowledge, 
of  expanding  strength  and  widening  vision,  of 
rational  confidence,  of  bold  encounter,  of  ex- 
pectant victory;  a  life  in  Christ  and  with  Christ 
and  for  Christ,  "till  we  all  come  in  the  unity 


152 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


of  the  faith,  arid  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Son 
of  God,  unto  a  perfect  man,  unto  the  measure  of 
the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ,  ...  of 
whom  the  whole  family  in  heaven  and  earth  is 
named. " 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


'S3 


CHAPTER   XIII 

CLERGY  AND   LAITY  —  THE  MINISTRY  OF 
INSTRUCTION 


Christian  Life  as  conceived  in  the 
-*•  Prayer  Book  is  not  only  one  of  Christian 
association,  involved  in  the  general  concep- 
tion of  it  as  membership  in  Christ's  Church. 
The  Church  is  an  organized  society,  and  while 
every  member  of  the  same  has  his  vocation  and 
ministry  of  mutual  helpfulness,  there  are  those 
especially  set  apart  for  the  service  of  the 
brotherhood  in  things  pertaining  to  the  reli- 
gious life.  In  fine,  there  is  an  official  dis- 
tinction of  the  clergy  and  laity  involving  a 
distinctive  relation  of  the  two.  The  peculiar 
people  are  by  reason  of  their  vocation  a  royal 
priesthood,  but  there  is  also  an  official  priest- 
hood representative  of  them,  consecrated  to  act 
in  behalf  of  the  priestly  people  towards  God, 
and  to  act  for  God  in  special  forms  of  ministra- 


154 


THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 


tion  for  the  people.  The  mutual  life  of  all 
Christians  must  be  orderly.  Let  all  things  be 
done  decently  and  in  order  is  the  Apostle's 
command,  and  "  order  is  the  parent  of  orders. " 
It  is  well  known  (and  as  this  is  not  an  ecclesias- 
tical treatise  it  need  only  be  mentioned  with- 
out being  defended  or  enlarged  upon)  that  the 
Prayer  Book  in  its  Ordinal  and  in  all  its  offices 
assumes  the  existence  of  the  threefold  ministry 
of  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  as  valid  from 
the  times  of  the  Apostles.  It  emphasizes  the 
importance  of  the  preservation  of  this  order  in 
its  historic  integrity,  so  that  "no  man  shall 
be  suffered  in  this  Church  to  execute  any  of 
said  functions  unless  he  ...  has  had  Episco- 
pal consecration  or  ordination." 

What  we  are  to  consider  is  the  bearing  of 
this  ministry  upon  the  Christian  life,  and  to 
mark  the  conception  of  that  life  as  evinced  by 
this  discipline  to  which  it  is  subjected  in  order 
to  its  successful  development. 

The  conception  of  the  Christian  Life  of  the 
Clergy  is  set  forth  in  the  Ordinal,  which,  con- 
tains the  offices  of  their  consecration ;  that  of 
the  Christian  people  as  related  to  the  clergy  is 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


155 


indicated  in  the  rubrical  directions,  which  reg- 
ulate the  common  worship  of  both. 

As  we  study  the  Ordinal  and  the  Rubrics, 
the  oneness  of  the  religious  life  common  to  all 
estates  of  men  in  Christ's  Church  comes  at  once 
into  prominence.  The  same  faith,  the  same 
diligence,  the  same  consecration  of  the  life  to 
the  Master,  the  same  following  of  the  Saviour's 
steps,  are  enjoined  equally  upon  all  men.  The 
sanctity  of  one  is  the  sanctity  of  all.  The 
difference  of  office  does  not  affect  in  the  least 
the  essence  of  the  Christian  Life,  it  only 
touches  the  outer  form  of  some  of  its  activities. 
The  clergy  as  portrayed  in  the  Prayer  Book 
are  not  a  caste,  exempt  from  the  demands  to 
which  the  laity  must  succumb,  or  deprived  of 
rights  which  the  laity  may  claim.  In  all  the 
essential  features  of  religious  living  clergy  and 
laity  are  called  to  the  same  task  and  endowed 
with  the  same  privileges.  If  we  connote  the 
exhortations  of  the  Baptismal  and  Ordination 
services  we  find  the  same  ideal  of  religious 
character  held  up  to  all  alike,  "which  is,  to 
follow  the  example  of  our  Saviour  Christ,  and 
to  be  made  like  unto  him;  continually  mortify- 


I56  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

ing  all  our  evil  and  corrupt  affections,  and 
daily  proceeding  in  all  virtue  and  godliness  of 
living."  This,  which  is  from  the  Baptismal 
office,  is  in  complete  unison  with  the  ordina- 
tion promise  to  "deny  all  ungodliness  and 
worldly  lusts,  and  live  soberly,  righteously,  and 
godly  in  this  present  world,"  and  indicates  that 
unity  of  spirit  amid  differences  of  ministration 
which  finds  utterance  in  the  prayer  contained 
in  the  office  of  the  "Ordering  of  Priests,"  in 
these  words :  "  that  as  well  by  these  thy  minis- 
ters, as  by  them  over  whom  they  shall  be  ap- 
pointed thy  ministers,  thy  Holy  Name  may  be 
forever  glorified  and  thy  blessed  Kingdom 
enlarged. " 

The  vocation  of  the  clergy  then,  as  that  of 
the  laity,  is  to  what  may  be  called  a  natural 
spiritual  life.  They  are  to  be  of  the  people  in 
their  mode  of  religious  living;  for  the  natural 
relations  of  life  are  of  divine  institution,  and 
are  not  barriers  to  the  Master's  approach,  but 
means  through  which  he  enters  into  commun- 
ion with  the  soul.  Thus,  in  the  questions  of 
the  ordination  examination  it  is  taken  for 
granted  that  the  clergy  share  and  mingle  in 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


'57 


the  common  life.  "Will  you  be  diligent  to 
frame  and  fashion  your  own  selves  and  your  fam- 
ilies, according  to  the  Doctrine  of  Christ?" 
it  is  asked.  Celibacy,  or  exclusion  from  ordi- 
nary family  ties,  is  not  of  the  essence  of  the 
clerical  character.  There  may  be  times  when 
it  is  proper  and  expedient  for  a  clergyman  to 
remain  single,  as  is  also  true  for  the  laity. 
Such  exigency  is  not  exclusively  clerical. 

St.  Paul  evidently  considered  the  exigencies 
of  his  time  as  giving  great  weight  to  the  value 
of  the  single  life.  But  the  references  to  this 
subject  by  the  Apostle,  and  by  his  Master  and 
ours,  are  to  a  temporary  expedient.  There  is 
no  superior  sanctity  in  celibacy,  so  that  the 
clergy  who  are  to  be  ensamples  to  the  flock 
must  practise  it.  The  clergy  and  the  laity  are 
co-workers  together  for  one  and  the  same  ob- 
ject, and  are  not  to  be  separate  in  their  sym- 
pathies or  to  be  kept  apart  through  diverse 
disciplines. 

What  light  then  does  the  existence  of  clergy 
and  laity  throw  upon  the  nature  of  the  reli- 
gious life  which  they  share  in  common?  It 
shows,  first  of  all,  the  serious  nature  of  that  life 


I58  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

in  its  deep  need  of  guidance  and  discipline 
and  instruction  for  its  adequate  development. 
Christian  life  is  not  a  holiday  pastime.  Man 
in  religion  is  called  to  a  high  and  strenuous 
endeavor.  That  life  is  likened  pre-eminently 
in  Scripture  to  a  warfare,  in  relation  to  evil 
within  and  without,  to  a  race,  in  reference 
to  its  arduous  and  necessary  attainment,  to  a 
taking  of  the  yoke,  which  symbolizes  obedient 
service.  A  ministry  divinely  set  to  accom- 
plish a  discipline  of  instruction  and  worship 
is  a  perpetual  witness  to  the  sober  task  of 
religion;  it  inbreathes  the  earnest  mind,  and 
divests  its  atmosphere  of  all  trace  of  ease, 
or  carelessness,  or  indifference.  It  marks  the 
religious  life  as  supreme  both  in  the  dignity  of 
its  aim  and  in  the  strenuousness  of  its  effort. 
The  ministry  which  is  appointed  for  the  ser- 
vice of  the  body  of  believers  emphasizes  the 
necessity  of  that  service,  and  ennobles  it  as 
worthy  the  enterprise  of  earnest  minded  men. 
Yet  it  does  not  in  witnessing  to  religion  as 
sober  make  it  sombre.  Its  voice  is  a  voice  of 
cheer  as  well  as  of  exhortation.  Its  presence 
testifies  to  its  task,  but  to  its  hopefulness  as 


THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


159 


well.  It  is  a  witness  to  need,  but  also  to  re- 
lief. While  it  depicts  the  Christian  life  as 
one  involving  earnest  and  unremitting  effort,  it 
discloses  as  well  the  reality  of  a  divine  inter- 
est and  aid  to  make  that  effort  effectual.  Why 
is  the  ministry  placed  in  the  midst  of  Christ's 
Church?  "I  am  among  you,"  said  Christ  of 
himself,  "as  one  that  serveth. "  His  pres- 
ence was  itself  a  confession  of  human  need, 
but  it  was  a  revelation  as  well  of  divine  rescue. 
Such  also  is  the  testimony  of  his  ministry. 
The  clergy  are  for  necessary  service,  but  are 
appointed  for  hopeful  service.  Christ  has  set 
them  in  the  church.  They  are  not  the  mere 
evidence  of  a  human  want  which  created  them, 
and  threw  them,  up  on  the  surface  of  its  neces- 
sity. They  are  the  sign  of  the  divine  interest 
which  appointed  them.  "  He  gave  some  apos- 
tles, some  prophets,  some  evangelists,  and  some 
pastors  and  teachers  for  the  perfecting  of  the 
Saints,  for  the  work  of  the  ministry,  for  the 
edifying  of  the  body  of  Christ."  So  the  very 
presence  of  the  ministry  testifies  to  Christ's 
presence  and  care,  and  the  Christian  life  thus 
guarded  may  well  be  a  life  of  aspiration,  of 


160  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

enthusiasm,  of  joyful  anticipation,  because  a 
life  which  God  has  set  himself  so  sedulously 
to  protect  and  develop.  It  makes  life  sacred  to 
find  it  so  carefully  tended,  and  brings  the  sense 
of  a  divine  companionship  into  it,  as  one  which 
Christ  watches.  Its  immeasurable  worth  is 
disclosed  in  the  fact  that  God  so  ardently  de- 
sires to  bring  it  to  perfection. 

This  is  the  more  impressed  on  us  when  we 
come  to  note  not  only  that  the  ministry  is,  but 
what  it  is.  How  is  it  to  aid  the  Divine  life  in 
man  ?  What  light  do  its  functions  shed  on  the 
Christian  Life  it  fosters? 

First  take  its  element  of  instruction.  The 
ministry  are  especially  appointed  to  be  preach- 
ers by  the  authority  which  established  them. 
"  Preach  my  Gospel  to  every  creature  "  accom- 
panies the  Apostles'  commission  to  go  into  all 
the  world,  and  forms  the  first  element  of  it. 
St.  Paul  avers  that  "  it  pleased  God  by  the 
foolishness  of  preaching  to  save  them  that  be- 
lieve." What  preaching  means  we  gather 
from  the  letters  of  the  first  great  preachers, 
which  we  call  Epistles,  and  which  let  us  into 
the  very  life  of  the  early  Church.  Preach- 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


ing  according  to  these  ensamples  is  not  merely 
the  recitation  of  gospel  facts,  but  the  applica- 
tion of  them  in  their  principles  to  the  daily  life 
and  changing  circumstances  of  men.  The  pul- 
pit stands  for  applied  Christianity.  Its  object 
is  not  merely  the  statement  of  a  mystery,  but 
a  flooding  of  life  with  the  light  of  the  mystery. 
It  is  not  so  much  an  explaining  of  life  as  suffus- 
ing it  with  a  sense  of  heavenly  worth  and  glory 
by  reason  of  the  mystery  of  godliness  revealed 
to  it  in  the  Gospel  preached.  It  is  showing 
how  the  least  things  of  life  may  be  done  in  the 
spirit  of  the  greatest,  through  the  inspiration 
from  on  high.  Preaching,  in  fine,  is  bringing 
Christ  to  bear  on  daily  life.  Amid  all  the 
divineness  of  its  heavenly  vision,  it  is  meant 
to  keep  life  steadfast  and  efficient  as  a  work 
among  men  and  a  work  for  men.  And  yet  by 
its  unfolding  of  the  sublime  truths  of  the  Gos- 
pel it  wards  off  all  taint  of  dreariness  and  life- 
less routine  from  duty,  because  of  its  stimulus 
to  an  intelligent  apprehension  of  the  faith. 

Preaching  thus  is  meant  to  keep  faith  practi- 
cal and  to  elevate  practice  into  a  living  energy 
of  love.  Its  legitimate  tendency  is  to  discrimi- 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


nate  religion  from  superstition  through  the 
intelligence  with  which  it  illumines  it,  and  to 
make  life  religious  through  the  divine  vision 
and  mandate  with  which  it  confronts  it.  It  is 
an  amazing  witness  by  its  very  function  to  life 
as  a  walk  with  God,  for  it  constantly  proclaims 
his  law  and  presents  his  truth  afresh  in  its 
bearing  on  the  duty  of  the  hour.  It  may  be- 
come very  dead  and  prosy  by  declining  into 
a  mere  repetitious  statement  of  worn  out  argu- 
ments and  abstract  dogmas.  But  it  is  meant 
to  be  daily  bread  for  daily  living;  not  a  disci- 
pline of  the  schools,  but  a  converse  with  those 
by  the  wayside  of  life.  It  is  fitted  to  impart 
that  ideal  impulse  to  actual  life  which  comes 
only  of  the  association  of  its  common  tasks,  its 
petty  cares,  its  vexing  perplexities,  its  blind- 
ing sorrows,  its  successes  and  its  joys,  with  a 
life  above  and  beyond  itself,  "a  life  hid  with 
Christ  in  God."  Hence  the  value  of  a  minis- 
try whose  members  are  partakers  of  the  com- 
mon life,  as  well  as  scholars  in  the  truths  of 
God. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


163 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  MINISTRY   OF  CONSOLATION 

T  T  7HILE  preaching  is  a  great  function  of 
*  *  the  ministry,  it  is  not  its  only  func- 
tion. There  is  the  ministry  of  official  as  well 
as  of  personal  declaration,  wherein  the  clergy- 
man speaks,  by  reason  of  his  office,  the  authori- 
tative message  of  God  to  his  people.  This  lies 
in  the  ministration  of  the  sacraments  and  the 
declaration  of  absolution.  As  elsewhere  we 
have  treated  of  the  Christian  Life  as  illus- 
trated in  the  sacraments,  let  us  here  look  at 
the  declaration  of  absolution,  as  taught  in  the 
Prayer  Book,  in  its  elucidation  of  the  Chris- 
tian Life. 

In  what  does  one  find  the  root  principle  of 
the  Christian  Life?  Is  it  not  in  the  fact  of 
forgiveness,  or  of  God's  coming  to  the  soul  in 
reconciliation?  If  all  God's  revelation  of  him- 
self in  Christ  were  simply  to  show  a  divine 


THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 


excellence  in  human  nature,  it  might  awaken  a 
boundless  admiration  in  human  souls,  but  it 
would  prove  anything  rather  than  a  ministry  of 
consolation  to  human  life.  For  the  fact  of  sin 
is  a  root  fact  in  human  consciousness  and  ex- 
perience. There  lies  in  each  soul,  as  it  comes 
to  know  itself,  the  sense  of  defect  of  goodness, 
and  the  perception  of  that  law  in  the  members 
which  wars  against  the  law  of  the  mind,  bring- 
ing us  into  captivity  to  the  law  of  sin.  The 
supreme  want  of  human  life  is  to  reach  God  as 
a  sinner.  We  must  come  to  him  in  reconcilia- 
tion. There  must  be  in  the  Divine  Mind  the 
element  of  forgiveness  if  there  is  human  help 
there.  The  Christ  who  comes  to  impart  life 
must  come  to  the  world  to  save  sinners,  else  he 
does  not  reach  us.  The  fundamental  fact  from 
which  all  growth  into  godliness  proceeds  is 
the  fact  that  in  Christ  God  is  reconciling  the 
world  unto  himself;  and  that  to  each  soul  he 
is  saying,  "Thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee.  "  His 
advent,  to  awaken  in  men  immortal  hope,  must 
be  the  tacit  declaration  :  "  No  taint  of  heredi- 
tary tendency  to  evil,  repugnant  to  me  as  that 
trend  of  nature  is;  no  actual  yielding  to  the 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


law  of  sin,  setting  the  human  will  against  my 
own,  hateful  as  this  wilful  trangression  is; 
no  mystery  of  iniquity  in  man,  in  fine,  shall 
suffice  to  quench  the  mystery  of  godliness  in 
Christ,  who  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world.  " 
He  comes  in  order  to  reveal  the  eternal  heart 
of  God  in  which  the  Christ  is  as  a  "  Lamb  slain 
from  the  foundation  of  the  world."  Believ- 
ing in  God,  as  seen  in  Christ,  as  one  who  in 
the  face  of  all  sin,  original  and  actual,  seeks 
to  join  man's  soul  to  himself,  who  bids  men 
love  him  because  he  first  loved  them,  the  soul 
gains  power  to  lead  a  new  life.  The  longing 
for  that  new  life  rises,  the  strength  to  gain  it 
rises,  the  ideal  of  it  rises.  A  sinful  life  may 
become  a  life  hid  with  Christ  in  God.  All 
the  future  Christian  life  is  thus  contained  in 
the  seed  of  forgiveness. 

In  the  ministry  of  reconciliation  the  declara- 
tion of  the  fact  of  Divine  forgiveness  must  be 
made  a  fundamental  feature.  And  the  record 
of  the  Gospel  meets  this  necessity.  Christ 
after  his  resurrection  gave  command  that 
"repentance  and  remission  of  sins  should  be 
preached  in  his  name  among  all  nations,"  and 


1 66  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

he  declared  to  his  disciples,  as  he  breathed  on 
them,  "whosesoever  sins  ye  remit  they  are 
remitted  unto  them,  and  whosesoever  sins  ye 
retain  they  are  retained."  However  we  con- 
strue these  words,  they  set  the  fact  and  doctrine 
of  forgiveness  in  the  very  forefront  of  Christian 
truth. 

The  Prayer  Book  meets  this  fundamental 
want  in  its  Declaration  of  Absolution  contained 
in  the  daily  offices  of  morning  and  evening 
prayer,  and  in  the  weekly  office  of  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  Holy  Communion.  Its  interpre- 
tation of  the  words  of  the  Risen  Lord  to  his 
disciples,  "  Whosesoever  sins  ye  remit  they  are 
remitted  unto  them,  and  whosesoever  sins  ye 
retain  they  are  retained,"  is  found  in  its  pro- 
vision for  carrying  them  into  effect.  Both  the 
rubric  which  directs  the  manner  of  its  use  and 
the  words  themselves  of  the  Declaration  of  Ab- 
solution show  the  mind  of  the  Anglican  Com- 
munion in  regard  to  the  function  of  the  minis- 
try in  relation  to  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  The 
Declaration  follows  the  confession  of  sin  and 
the  prayer  for  forgiveness.  Then  the  priest 
rises  to  give  the  assurance  of  God's  attitude 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


167 


and  disposition  towards  the  repentant  sinner, 
and  of  Christ's  commission  to  his  ministers 
authoritatively  to  declare  that  disposition.  The 
fact  of  forgiveness  is  not  to  remain  doubtful  to 
any  penitent  soul.  "  He  pardoneth  and  absolv- 
eth  all  those  who  truly  repent  and  unfeignedly 
believe  his  Holy  Gospel " ;  the  Gospel  of  for- 
giveness. God's  attitude  and  act  are  sure. 
He  for  his  part  will  most  surely  keep  and 
perform  them.  And  in  view  of  this  Divine 
certainty  the  sinful  soul  is  bidden  to  ask  for 
the  grace  of  true  penitence  by  the  Holy  Spirit, 
that  its  repentance  may  give  free  course  to 
the  mercy  of  God,  that  it  may  be  glorified  in 
man's  deliverance  according  to  the  will  of  God. 
To  make  this  positive  and  authoritative  dec- 
laration is  inherent  in  the  ministerial  com- 
mission, and  the  fact  that  it  is  so  is  a  strong 
attestation  to  the  individual  soul  of  the  gen- 
eral fact  of  forgiveness  contained  in  the  Gospel. 
Whosoever  thus  accepts  the  fact  thus  declared, 
his  sins  are  remitted,  whosoever  refuses,  his 
sins  are  retained;  but  sins  are  remitted  by  the 
mercy  of  God  only  through  man's  own  act  of 
acceptance,  and  they  are  retained  in  spite  of 


1 68  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

God's  mercy  only  by  man's  own  act  of  re- 
fusal. The  ministerial  function  in  the  act  of 
forgiveness,  is  thus  not  the  conveyance  of  for- 
giveness but  the  authoritative  attestation  that 
God  forgives.  The  priest  stands  in  his  office 
as  the  commissioned  witness  to  that  attitude 
and  disposition  of  God  which  welcomes  peni- 
tent sinners. 

The  fundamental  want  then  of  man  in  com- 
ing to  God  in  reconciliation  is  thus  ministered 
to  by  the  declaration  of  absolution  in  a  most 
effective  way.  The  essential  element  of  the 
Gospel  of  Christ,  forgiveness,  is  taken  up  into 
the  worship  of  the  Church  and  made  prominent 
and  personal  to  men  then  and  there.  The  fact 
would  be  true,  forever  true,  by  Christ's  word  in 
the  Gospel,  were  it  not  made  conspicuous  in  the 
worship  of  the  church.  It  is  not  true  because 
the  minister  declares  it,  but  the  minister  de- 
clares it  because  it  is  true,  and  he  has  power 
and  commandment  to  declare  it  because  it  is 
a  truth  so  essential  to  the  Christian  Life  of 
every  soul.  The  precatory  form  of  the  declara- 
tion of  absolution  in  the  communion  service  is 
based  on  the  fundamental  position  elucidated 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


169 


in  the  declaration  in  the  morning  and  evening 
prayer.  Its  wording  is  not  so  strong  as  the 
longer  form,  but  it  is  essentially  the  same  in 
meaning. 

The  whole  tone  and  act  of  the  service  of  the 
Prayer  Book  in  this  regard  are  most  healthful. 
The  confession  is  not  to  or  through  the  priest, 
but  with  the  priest  to  God,  and  the  declaration 
by  the  priest  is  for  himself  as  well  as  for  the 
people.  He  as  priest  announces  officially  to 
himself  as  sinful  man  the  same  great  truth  of 
God  on  the  same  condition.  His  function  is 
not  the  conveyance  of  the  fact,  but  the  convey- 
ance of  the  knowledge  and  assurance  of  the 
fact,  with  and  by  the  authority  of  the  Great 
Master,  who  sealed  the  fact  of  forgiveness  in 
his  own  blood.  Thus  the  Christian  Ministry 
stands  in  its  very  office  for  the  great  fact,  that 
God  in  Christ  is  reconciling  the  world  unto 
himself.  And  in  this  as  in  his  other  min- 
istrations the  minister's  function  is  to  bring 
men  directly  face  to  face  with  God,  "unto 
whom  all  hearts  are  open,  all  desires  known." 
Confession  is  directly  to  God,  pardon  is  direct 
from  him.  -  The  priest  stands  as  the  authori- 


1 70  THE  PR  A  YER  BOOK  AND 

tative  witness  to  this  direct  relation  of  God  to 
man  in  the  authoritative  declaration  which  he 
makes  of  it.  Auricular  confession,  which  makes 
confession  of  sin  through  the  priest  essential, 
is  a  discipline  which  came  into  no  part  of  the 
Church  until  after  many  centuries.  Growing 
very  gradually  as  a  voluntary  practice  after  the 
fourth  century,  it  found  its  first  Synodical  au- 
thorization at  the  Fourth  Lateran  Council,  A.  D. 
1215,  about  which  time  the  "indicative"  form 
of  absolution,  Ego  te  absolve,  was  introduced. 
As  the  Primitive  Church  did  not  practise  it,  the 
discipline  of  the  Confessional  cannot  be  cited 
as  its  interpretation  of  Christ's  words  concern- 
ing remission  of  sin.  The  Prayer  Book  makes 
no  general  provision  for  it.  In  some  extreme 
and  exceptional  condition,  where  by  self-ex- 
amination the  individual  cannot  quiet  his  own 
conscience,  he  is  told,  in  one  of  the  occasional 
exhortations  in  the  communion  service,  to  go 
to  some  minister  of  God's  word  and  open  his 
grief  that  he  may  receive  "  such  godly  counsel 
and  advice  as  may  tend  to  the  quieting  of  his 
conscience."  But  this  is  not  in  order  to  render 
God's  pardon  more  efficacious  because  spoken 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  171 

by  his  minister,  but  to  render  repentance  more 
efficacious  by  the  minister's  instruction  of  the 
sinner.  It  is  a  discipline  for  man's  approach  to 
God,  rather  than  a  medium  of  God's  approach 
to  man. 

The  Prayer  Book  of  the  English  Church 
speaks  of  the  benefit  of  absolution  as  well  as 
ghostly  counsel  and  advice,  and  there  is  given 
for  such  cases  the  indicative  form  of  absolution, 
to  be  found  in  the  private  Office  for  the  Visita- 
tion of  the  Sick.  Both  the  phrase  and  the  form 
were  omitted  from  the  American  Prayer  Book, 
doubtless  for  fear  of  fostering  the  notion  that 
only  through  sacerdotal  mediation  could  par- 
don be  obtained  for  such  extreme  cases.  That 
could  not  indeed  have  been  the  meaning  of  the 
English  Book,  which  in  its  daily  service  so  exclu- 
sively employs  the  declarative  instead  of  the 
indicative  form  of  absolution,  and  whose  whole 
spirit  is  to  affirm  that  the  intervention  of  the 
priest  is  not  essential  to  the  soul's  effective 
converse  with  God.  Its  key  note,  as  that  of  our 
own  Prayer  Book,  is,  "  I  will  arise  and  go  to 
my  Father,  and  will  say  unto  Him,  Father,  I 
have  sinned."  Jts  declaration  of  absolution,  as 


1 72  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

ours,  is,  "  He  pardoneth  and  absolveth  all  those 
who  truly  repent  and  unfeignedly  believe." 
Its  general  regimen  is  public  confession,  and, 
if  there  be  an  exception  in  some  extreme  case 
allowed,  it  is  not  allowed  in  order  to  over- 
throw and  repudiate  the  doctrine  and  attitude 
affirmed  and  maintained  in  its  daily  offices  of 
devotion,  but  simply  to  "minister  to  a  mind 
diseased  "  that  it  too  may  escape  from  its  mor- 
bidness and  come  to  grasp  the  significance  of 
the  declaration  of  absolution,  before  all  the 
people,  that  God  himself  effectively  pardons 
the  soul  which  comes  directly  in  penitence  to 
him.  The  priesthood  are  witnesses  not  medi- 
ators, declarers  not  conveyers  of  his  grace. 
This  runs  all  through  the  services  of  whatever 
nature  which  the  Prayer  Book  furnishes  in  its 
delineation  of  the  relation  of  priest  and  people. 
The  whole  tone  and  expression  of  the  Col- 
lects illustrate  this  attitude.  The  Collect  for 
Ash  Wednesday,  to  be  repeated  each  day  in 
Lent,  is  a  very  patent  instance  as  intended  for 
the  specially  penitent  season  of  the  Christian 
Year,  and  it  stands  in  complete  harmony  with 
all  the  other  Collects  of  the  Book :  "  Almighty 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


173 


and  Everlasting  God,  who  hatest  nothing  that 
thou  hast  made,  and  dost  forgive  the  sins  of 
all  those  who  are  penitent,  create  and  make  in 
us  new  and  contrite  hearts  that  we  worthily 
lamenting  our  sins  and  acknowledging  our 
wretchedness  may  obtain  of  thee,  the  God  of 
all  mercy,  perfect  remission  and  forgiveness, 
through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord."  A  Book 
which  abounds  in  such  prayers,  which  makes 
no  provision  for  the  instruction  of  private  con- 
fessors, and  contains  no  hint  of  the  secret 
discipline  of  the  confessional,  which  bids  its 
ministers  authoritatively  to  declare  publicly 
each  day  to  all  people,  that  God  "pardoneth 
and  absolveth  all  who  truly  repent  and  un- 
feignedly  believe,"  may  truly  claim  to  put  the 
doctrine  of  forgiveness  openly  in  the  forefront 
of  its  delineation  of  the  Christian  Life.  It 
moreover  associates  that  doctrine  with  the 
co-ordinate  truth  that  the  Christian  Life  is  an 
immediate  relation  of  the  soul  to  God,  which 
requires  no  priestly  mediation  to  make  it 
effective.  The  one  only  Mediator  according 
to  it  is  He  who,  being  both  God  and  man,  has 
broken  clown  every  barrier  suggestive  of  in- 


174  THE  PRAYER  BOOK  AND 

direct   and   difficult   approach   to   the    Father 
reconciled  in  Him. 

The  tone  of  the  Prayer  Book  moreover  in 
ever'-  part  in  regard  to  sin,  while  solemn,  is 
that  of  solemn  hopefulness.  It  is  hopeful, 
for  it  is  the  witness  of  reconciliation.  Its  De 
Profundis  and  its  Magnificat  run  into  each 
other.  It  speaks  of  cheer,  though  it  speaks  to 
sinners.  How  radiant  is  the  Service  of  Holy 
Communion  especially  with  hope  and  bless- 
ing !  It  is  interpenetrated  with  the  assurance 
that  where  sin  abounded  grace  doth  much 
more  abound ;  that  "  not  as  the  offence  so  also 
is  the  free  gift;  for  if  through  the  offence  of 
one  many  be  dead,  much  more  the  grace  of  God 
and  the  gift  by  grace,  which  is  by  one  man, 
Jesus  Christ,  hath  abounded  unto  many."  It 
is  full  of  comfortable  words  to  the  sinful,  for 
they  are  words  to  the  redeemed.  It  seems  to 
be  singing  as  its  Eucharistic  hymn :  "  Beloved, 
now  are  we  the  Sons  of  God,  and  it  doth  not 
yet  appear  what  we  shall  be,  but  we  know  that 
when  He  doth  appear  we  shall  be  like  Him, 
for  we  shall  see  Him  as  he  is."  The  Christian 
Life  which  it  presupposes  and  to  which  it  min- 


THE   CHRISTIAN  LIFE  175 

isters  has  so  deep  a  root  in  the  loving  and  for- 
giving heart  of  God,  that  it  is  fully  furnished 
with  motive,  stimulus,  and  inspiration  to  fight 
the  good  fight  of  faith  and  lay  hold  on  eternal 
life. 


3X 


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